While I love rapid progress and an (effective) quick fix as much as the next person, my history with Basque reflects my belief in the power of slow and steady language learning.

Playing a long game is far more realistic for most adults who are fitting a language alongside holding down a full-time job, bringing up a family (or, often, both).

I started learning Basque in September 2013.

In January 2014 I started I started Howtogetfluent and learning Basque has been the focus of several projects here on the site.

I’ve done several Fluent in Three Months Challenges with Basque. I spent a month on an immersion course at Lazkao (Spanish Basque Country).

For a month in summer 2018, I ramped up my focussed study (“Basque Boost August”). I did the same last summer with my “Two language tango” (Basque/Japanese). The end of the “Tango” was my last full Basque update…until now .

My Basque study log

I find language logging a useful motivational tool and I’ve been keeping a track on my “active” work on Basque for most of my journey with the language.

By “active” work, I mean focussed study slots (usually working with one of my course books) and one-to-one conversation practice with a teacher via Skype (arranged through italki.com).

My focussed study slot is usually lasts thirty minutes (sometimes more, not often less).

Unlike with my basic Japanese project, I haven’t had any “minimum” targets for Basque since last August.

It’s been a question of fitting my Basque sessions in around my Japanese.

As a minimum, though, I like to book one thirty-minute one-to-one conversation practice session a week.

Here’s the time I’ve put in this year to the end of June (all the Skype lessons were 30 minutes each).

January 2020: 30 mins study; three Skype lessons = 2 hours
February 2020: 15 min study: five Skype lessons = 2 hours, 45 min
March 2020: 30 mins study; six Skype lessons = 4 hours
April 2020: 9 hours study; 11 Skype lessons = 14 hours, 30 min
May 2020: 8 hours, 20 mins study; 6 Skype lessons = 10 hours, 50 mins
June 2020: 4 hours, 50 mins study; 4 Skype lessons = 5 hours, 50 mins

Total for first half of 2020: 49 hours, 44 mins (excludes informal listening and reading practice, on which there’s more below).

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, I’ve been working from home since mid March.

Losing my commute means I’ve gained two hours a day and a whole lot of energy. As a result, in these figures you’ll see a marked increase the time I’ve been putting in at the Basque.

Vlogging in Basque in Asia

I was on the road in Asia for all of October last year and, en route, I took the impromptu decision to do some vlogs on the trip in Russian, German, Welsh and Basque.

There were nine vlogs in Basque in all.

I short the first one on humid sunny day in Singapore.:

The last one, after a week in Hong Kong, was shot in Tokyo’s famous Ueno park, where I was caught by a torrential downpour:

My Basque is pretty ropey in the vids, but I found the project a helpful way to keep me using the language.

At the same time, I was making a video record of a trip that it gives me great pleasure to look back on.

How about keeping some sort of diary of your life in your language? It could be in writing, short audio recordings on your phone or making a video. You don’t have to post to social media….

The power of community in my Basque learning

I’ve been in London’s Basque Society since 2013.

It’s provided a good way to meet native speakers and to use the language naturally several times a year.

Since I got back from Japan, I’ve only attended one London Basque Society Event. That was the Christmas meal (with dancing).

I’ve been in the Society since I started learning. I spoke a lot of Basque at the event and noticed some improvement in my fluency since I’d last met up with other members, several months earlier.

Are you using the power of community in your language learning? It could be physical meetups with native speakers or other learners, participation in an online forum or using the language with neighbours, relatives or friends.

One-to-one online conversation and my intermediate Basque learning materials

There are never many Basque teachers on italki. They were down to two at one point, but currently there are four.

I’ve been working with Irati since January 2019.

Very often, the whole of our lessons together end up as free conversation.

Other days, there’s time to work with the materials (pdfs) created by the HABE Institute for the teaching of Basque and Basque Language Literacy to Adults.

I have these from my days attending group face-to-face language classes arranged by the London Basque Society. This year, we’ve worked on Units 39 to 41.

Bakarka is a pretty traditional grammar/ exercises/ reading/ translation – based self-study course. I worked through Book 1 several years ago to consolidate the work with the HABE materials. I haven’t used Books 2 and 3.

In September 2018 I started on Bakarka Book 4. There’s no audio at this level but the grammar explanations, practice exercises and reading are very helpful for controlled practice of Basque’s rather complex verb forms and the extensive tense system.

At the end of last year I’d nearly finished Unit 5 (of nine) and by the end of this June is was halfway through Unit 7 (of nine).

I’ve mostly used the course for extra practice during my self-study sessions.

Also, I sometimes used to do Bakarka 4 exercises verbally with one of my former teachers, Eider.

It wasn’t a particularly effective use of time with a teacher but she wasn’t very talkative and conversation would often dry up after fifteen minutes or so.

When Eider dropped off italki in the middle of August 2019, I started with a new teacher who’d appeared: Gari.

It was very enjoyable to have lessons with him between summer last year and early June.

In addition to free conversation, I sometimes sent him copies of earlier units of the HABE course to provide some conversation topics (and consolidation for me: I’d already covered these units with Irati or one of my earlier teachers).

Gari is now available much less on the platform but several new teachers have appeared. In the middle of June I had my first session with Rodrigo in early July and I’ve had another since.

He only offers one hour slots. I used to have one-hour slots when I was working intensively on my advanced German and Russian but I felt a bit daunted about a full hour in my lower-intermediate Basque.

I’ve found, though, that the time with Rodrigo has passed quickly both tines.

In the first session, it helped that he was very chatty and we had Russia in common. We’ve both lived there and learned the language.

In the second lesson we did more free conversation and I .pdf-ed a couple of pages of Arian B2.1 over to him too, to provide some additional material to discuss.

Arian is one of the best-known courses published in the Basque Country.

There are two course books for each CEFRL level, along with work books and CDs for each level. The only level I have is B2.1, which I started Sept 18. I haven’t previously used it with any of my teachers.

I’m working through the course book in order and enjoying the reading material and associated exercises (the topics are genuinely engaging).I’m using the audio for dictation practice again.

By the end of June, I’d finished Unit 4 of 12 in the course book. This year, I’ve also started the workbook. I’m still in the first of the four (quite long) units.

Don’t reinvent the wheel! Make full use of a few key learner courses at YOUR level, whether in textbook or on-line course format.

Get lots of one-to-one conversation practice with a teacher. Online wins for convenience. Use several teachers. It makes for variety and means you’re not left high and dry if one of them isn’t available any more.

Listening practice

Since the beginning of the lockdown, I’ve been disciplined about scheduling in regular exercise. I’ve done a thirty minute run or a fifty minute walk round the local park most days.

Before the lockdown, I’d do that run two or three times a week and walk to the underground and back during the three days a week I was in the office (2 x 12 minute walk).

I was using that time to listen to my Pimsleur Japanese audio course. During the lockdown, I’ve been listening to native Basque radio news programmes instead. So I’ve been getting at least thirty-minutes a day listening practice.

While there’s still a lot I can’t understand, I can now follow enough of the content to have a sense of the substance of a report or discussion.

I also often have enough knowledge of the language to work out the meaning of words and “acquire” some of them naturally from native content of this type.

In addition to a daily does of high-quality audio, I watched twenty minutes or so of the evening Basque TV news two or three times a week. That’s one of the three news broadcasts a day available on the Basque TV web player.

In some ways, “news vocabulary” is easier because it’s very standard and can get repetitive.

Luckily, there’s a host of other TV material on the EITB site and it’s important to listen to different linguistic registers.

I’ve also started to watch a thriller series from the 90s called “Balbemendi”. There are 27 one-hour episodes. I’m still on episode two but have been enjoying it so far. It’s conversational dialogue.

I’ve also recently discovered a one-hour daily current affairs programme called “Eztabaidan” (In conversation) which includes reports and panel discussion all on one current topic. It gives me exposure to a wider range of registers than the pure news programmes.

Get lots and lots of listening practice. “Comprehensible input” is best: just at or above your current level, to consolidate what you already know and to help you “acquire” the language sub-consciously from context.

Reading Harry Potter

I’ve had a Basque copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on my shelves for a couple of years (as you may know if you’re a long-term viewer of my vids on YouTube):

I only started reading the book this spring. I’m now over half way through.

Though I know a lot about the story I haven’t read the book or watched the film in any other language.

There’s a lot I don’t understand, but I can get enough to follow the general course of the story and build a mental picture of Hogwarts and events unfolding. I’d say it feels a bit like looking through an un-evenly tinted window (more opaque in some places than others!).

Reading is a great way to reinforce your knowledge of language patterns and to expand your vocab. Presssed for time? A paragraph a day is much better than nothing. What are you reading at the moment in your target language?

Reaping the rewards of long-term language learning

This spring and summer I’ve really felt a shift in gear with my intermediate Basque. I have a sense of things coming together at last. It’s getting easier to understand native speech and to read native materials. My spoken language, though still limited, feels more fluent. I can say quite a lot of what I want and I”m now at a stage where I can usually talk round bits I can’t say.

The moral: Keep at it with focussed study, speaking and listening practice. It may not all be dramatic but you WILL see results, even if it takes longer than you might have hoped!

Are you learning Basque? How’s it going? Are your experiences similar to mine? Are you doing things differently? Let me know in the comments below!

The post Intermediate Basque: learner update appeared first on How to get fluent, with Dr Popkins.

Monday 5th August (1 hr Basque; 1 hr 15 mins Japanese)

An 8 am start, with thirty minutes from Japanese from Zero 3, Lesson 1. Looking at how to count timespans じかん　(hours), にち (days),しゆう　(weeks), つき (months),　ねん (years).

Usingまえ (before, in front of) to mean “ago”, パージ for counting pages. Then これから and いまから to mean from now, starting now.

Time to make a quick cup of Clipper lemon grass, mate and lemon verbena infusion before a thirty minute Skype lesson. I think this tea is a less aggressive stimulant than strong coffee and great for first thing in the morning if you want to keep your daily coffee consumption down.

Not feeling at my best. I had a mild stomach bug while in Coventry over the weekend and now cough and sore throat back. Did I pick up another cold on the packed train yesterday on the way back from Coventry?

I didn’t see Eider last week, so the Basque lesson (half an hour from 9 am) ended up as all catch up conversation. We never got to some exercises from Bakarka, Book 4. I told her about my trip to Coventry over the weekend and more or less managed to convey the story of Lady Godiva (Coventry’s most famous historical resident). I then told her about a big news story here in the UK: the risk that a dam is going to burst in Derbyshire. All the residents in the town below have been evacuated. As for Eider: there had been yet another local carnival. It’s festivals every other weekend in the Spanish Basque country, it seems.

Very late morning, I did another forty-five minutes on Japanese from Zero 3 Lesson 1: reading practice (“questions and answers” and “mini conversations”).

Most of the rest of the day went writing a rough first draft of a new free webinar for people get when they join the Howtogetfluent Email club. It will replace the current five-part video series (so if you want that, join the Email Club snappy!).

Started working on the slides for my second Russian A2 grammar revision webinar, which will look at how prefixes and suffixes are used in Russian and how understanding the system can help build your word power. I got the topic of each slide sorted out. Now “all” that I have to do is fill in the content. Getting the plan right is the hardest thing, in a way, though.

Then, thirty minutes Basque to finish. More prep from Bakarka 4, lesson 6 for the next lesson with Eider (won’t be till next week) for fifteen minutes, then fifteen minutes gold listing my Habe materials, lesson 6.

Tuesday 6th August (1 hr Basque; 1 hr 10 mins Japanese)

A veeery slow start today. Morning went tidying up in the garden and harvesting more blackberries. Freezing some and handing a brimming mug of them over the fence to my neighbour.

Between one thing and another it was 12.45 before I sat down for the first thirty minutes of Japanese: translating the mini conversations in JFZ 3 Lesson 1 into English. It wasn’t flowing. I found myself moving back and forth between the page and the wordlists in all three volumes of JFZ

Next up: thirty minutes from the Basque Arian B2.1 course continuing to read about the pros and cons of buying and renting a place to live.

In the afternoon: busy recording and editing the Tuesday diary video update (covering week two of this “sprint” in retrospect).

In the later evening I did the reading comprehension in Lesson One of Japanese from Zero 3. It was tough going.

To finish: fifteen minutes Basque reading from Bakarka 4, lesson One in preparation for tomorrow’s lesson with Gari and fifteen minutes gold listing (Basque) Habe lesson 6.

Due to my food poisoning and colds, haven’t been running since last week. So, I’m not getting the Pimsleur audio course in at all.

Also, as I don’t have a commute during my sabbatical month, I’m not actually doing as much Japanese flash carding as I’d like, even though that is supposed to be a new priority.

Wednesday 7th August (1 hr Basque; 1 hr Japanese)

Started at 7.30 with thirty minutes on Japanese from Zero 3. On from last night’s reading comprehension to the related short dialogue. Some of which was equally hard going.

Twenty minutes prep from a new (Basque) Habe lesson on 39 – the next one I’ll be starting with Irati. The lesson theme is “noise”. It covers loud music, noisy neighbours and so on. Reading felt harder than it should, useful new words coming up such as “doinu” – tune, melody “iskanbila” – disturbance, trouble; “pantaila” (TV or cinema screen); “liskar” – a fight, dispute and “zarata” (noise) itself.

Good lesson on Skype with Gari for thirty minutes from nine o’clock. In essence a repeat performance for me of the lesson with Eider on Monday. I was telling him all about my trip to Coventry and the story of Lady Godiva. A chance to forget all the words I forgot on Monday all over again (horse, naked, high taxes, to go blind and so on). Gari was running the usual google doc of my mistakes. He maybe overcorrects but the other two teachers hardly correct me at all.

Mid morning: turned back to preparing the webinar for tonight’s Russian session. That swallowed up the rest of the day till it was time to deliver in the evening.

After, at 22.15, thirty minutes more Japanese, this time working through the JFZ3, lesson One reading comprehension questions.

To finish, ten minutes Basque gold listing Habe unit 6 and into unit 7.

Collapsed into bed.

Thursday 8th August (1 hr Basque; 1 hr Japanese)

This is the first day for ages that I actually feel normally well.

Started at 8.15 with a cup of lemongrass mate and thirty minutes of Japanese from Zero 3, doing the “substitution exercises”. You start with a sentence and then have to change one element each time. It’s quite mechanical but it gets you using what you’ve learned and often pulls in words you may not have covered for a while.

Lightly re-edited yesterday’s Russian webinar slides, edited video in Final Cut Pro and a “thumbnail” image in Adobe Elements and uploaded everything. The video is 51 mins long, so the upload took quite a while.

14:00 onwards: thirty minutes Basque preparation, working on Habe unit 39. Still on the thorny subject of “noisy neighbours”. Listened to one of the audio clips and one of the video clips that go with the lesson (I don’t use these with the teachers).

Late afternoon and early evening, on Skype recording interviews with John Fotheringham of Language Mastery for the YouTube channel. Very rich and enjoyable discussion about his language learning history and practice, about, blogging and podcasting. Then, more detailed discussions on his advice for beginning and for intermediate Japanese learners. It’s a “return game”, as he interviewed me for his podcast a couple of weeks ago. That episode appears tomorrow, I gather. Look out for John’s appearances on our YouTube channel before too long.

After almost two hours talking to John, time for a walk round the park. I’m still not running after the food poisoning and cold. The last two days, I’ve only left the house to nip to the supermarket. It was time for some greenery and a proper stretch of the legs.

21.50 onwards did another hour on my languages:

First, thirty minutes Japanese. I covered the final question and answer rubric and thus finished JFZ3, lesson One.

On to Basque: reading more short texts from Arian B2.1. Still on the subject of the pros and cons of renting and buying a place to live, now widening out a bit as well to consider sharing accommodation.

Finished at 10pm and there’s still the question of what the Thursday vlog. Erm, that’s today!

I was mulling over the two options on my walk in the park. Before the walk I’d laid down the first timeline for Vienna bookshop safari.

In the end, I decided that would take too long to edit up in the time available and decided to go tomorrow with an interview with Dylan Inglis a hugely impressive young language learner who took a gap year out from uni to learn Basque and Mandarin.

I recorded the conversation a while ago and I’ve been waiting for a gap in my publication schedule to slip it in. In the end, editing the sound took longer than expected (Dylan’s voice was much louder than mind, so I had to go through equalising at every point where he speaks. It’s a thirty-four minute interview, so that was quite a bit of editing). Finally uploaded at one thirty in the morning. Pressed publish and headed for bed.

Friday 9th August (1 hr Basque; 1 hr Japanese)

Kicked off at 8.20 by beginning Japanese from Zero 3, lesson 2. Six more kanji: the numbers seven to ten, 100 and 1000. I’ve done all these before in James Heisig’s book Remembering the Kanji, so a quick review. I reached for Heisig to remind myself of the mnemonics. Then I did the fill in the gaps exercise using the new characters in Japanese sentences otherwise written in kana. Also involved using the various counter words including 〜つ (general/abstract objects), 〜こ (small, round objects), 〜はい (thin, flat objects), ーほん (long, cylindrical objects), 〜にん (people), ーびき (animals). I felt these have been under-practised in the course books so far, so the revision was welcome.

9 am to 9.30: Skype lesson with Irati. Went really well. My rough and ready Basque was flowing. Irati is now back in Euskal Herria. She is staying at her parents’ place after a month on the road. We were conversing freely for 20 mins and then did ten mins practising reported speech again from Habe Unit 38.

Out for the first run since ages. Dull and overcast but weirdly warm and humid. The thermometer was showing 30 degrees in the garden but the BBC weather app. only said 24 degrees. Later on in the day it got windy, cooler and there was rain.

The bulk of today went on finalising the scrip of a new free sign-up webinar. Rehearsing and then filming the six parts in different places around the house. Wasn’t finished till 7pm. Made myself a large green salad.

19.40-20.10 – Finished JFZ 3 Lesson One with an exercise writing out the names of countries in katakana. Then, reviewed another vocab list – more things about the house and had finished the unit. Started Lesson 2 – a quick look at the vocab, then some new verbs: to cost time/money かかる ； to pay for/with はらい.

Then thirty minutes Basque to finish. Completed section one of Arian B2.1. Started to work on section one of the workbook, the second, complementary volume.

Last job of the day, booking a hotel near Changi airport for one night at the end of October (on the way back to London after my two weeks in Japan). Booked the train for a short weekend trip to Canterbury tomorrow. Packed. Fell into bed at 23:00.

That then, was my week three. How is your summer language learning going? Basque, Japanese….or what? Let me know in the comments below!

Week One totals – Basque: 6 hours, 40 mins; Japanese: 5 hours

Week Two totals – Basque 4 hours, 10 minutes; Japanese: 5 hours, 15 minutes

Week Three totals – Basque 5 hours; Japanese: 5 hours, 25 minutes

Mini sprint running total – Basque: 15 hours, 50 mins; Japanese: 15 hours, 40 minutes

Related posts

Basque/Japanese diary: Week One

Basque/Japanese diary: Week Two

Basque/Japanese diary: Week Four

The post Basque/Japanese diary: Week Three appeared first on How to get fluent, with Dr Popkins.

My last in-detail Basque update was at the end of August. That was a period of focussed additional work on the language. There was a clear short-term aim for the end of the moth: taking part in the shoot of the TV programme, Euskalonski, in London.

Though I was quite nervous beforehand, all went well, as I reported afterwards. I even shot my own vlog within the official shoot:

What’s been happening since then?

Steady-as-she-goes September

September was a normal, relatively quiet month. I was busy in the day job, but nothing outside routine working hours. I wound back on the amount of Basque study I was doing, but continued to have one-to-one lessons with two different teachers (via Skype).

In August I’d done twenty lessons and fourteen hours of self-study.

The September study total was down to 11 lessons and five and three-quarter hours of self-study.

That broke down to 7 x 45 min sessions with Iñigo and 4 x 30 min sessions with Eider. I did self-study on eleven days, mainly thirty minute slots. In total I did a Skype session, self-study or both on twenty-one of September’s thirty days, spread pretty evenly though the month.

8 September was “Basque Diaspora Day”. This “tradition” has only begun this year. The day was approved by the government of the Basque Autonomous Region (which includes three of the seven historic Basque provinces). They chose early September because that was when Juan Sebastian Elkano completed the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1522 (the expedition was initially led by Magellan, who died en route).

The London Basque Society put on a meal at the Haggerston Community Centre. It wasn’t particularly well attended.  That didn’t matter, though, as several people I know were there, including Richard, another long-term Basque learner and fellow veteran of the residential course at Maizpide language centre in Lazkao. The food was outstanding and the wine was flowing.

Overwhelm October (and November)

So far, so good with my current “little-by-little”, “keep-at-it” approach to the language.

Then other things cranked up.  First week of October: in Scotland (vlogs published). Second week: round the clock at the office. Third week: in Dubai with work (and some time to vlog – series coming soon)….Next a three-day turnaround at work and finishing preparing my workshop for the Polyglot Conference before heading out to Ljubljana….Back to London for two-and-a half weeks in early November (first weekend away, second vlogging London’s Language Show, otherwise very busy at work)….After that three weeks away in Asia with work and visiting my sister in Beijing.

You get the idea. It was all highly stimulating stuff but altogether I was away 21 days in October, 16 in November and the first week of December.

Something had to “give”.  My current one post and two videos a week content schedule here at Howtogetfluent, isn’t up for negotiation (at the moment), so it had to be my study of Basque.

I only clocked up one Skype lesson in early October. That was about it for the next two months.

Keeping Basque ticking over

While snowed under at work and on the road, I still did managed to engage with the language, to some extent, though.

During the days that I was at home I often had native-level Basque radio on in the background. I also got thirty minutes additional passive audio exposure through earbuds/the phone two or three times a week when out jogging.

I took Colloquial Basque with me to Asia and reviewed a couple of chapters (again, passively) on flights.

In my bag I also packed a native-level novella and sat a few times in cafés in Singapore and Hong Kong several times reading a few pages with the help of Google Translate on the phone.

None of this was “optimal” learning.

The listening and reading material wasn’t “graded” to my level “+1”, that magic “zone of proximal development” at which we appear to learn most effectively.

My engagement with the textbook was too passive.

I wasn’t doing spaced repetition work or “goldlisting” to consolidate my knowledge of words and phrases.

I’m not too worried about any of that, though.

Learning Basque is back: returning to regular study

I’ve now been back for two weeks and I’m getting back into my regular study slot routine.

I’m still as enthusiastic as ever. At times, I’m still as frustrated, too.

That said, I think it’s getting easier to remember new words. Before I went away, I’d already noticed a steady (though) increase in my ability understand the gist of radio broadcasts. This is continuing.

The two main textbooks I’m using at the moment are Bakarka 4 and (in a new development), Arian B2 (upper intermediate)(pictured above). My level is really B1 (lower intermediate) but I don’t have that book and the content in Arian B2 is super interesting (lots about the Basque country, its people and culture.

If anything, I think I’ve benefitted from a pause, a phenomenon I vlogged on back in the summer.

Have you ever noticed the same?

I’m not back with one-to-one lessons, yet. I had one booked with Eider last weekend but she had to cancel, so I’ve decided to wait till Christmas and New Year celebrations are out of the way. The good news is that two further teachers have appeared on italki (though one of them seems only to offer one-hour slots. which is too much for me in my lower-level languages).

I’m also going to contact the other two regular teachers with whom I’ve been working this year, to see if they’re up for more sessions in the New Year.

Last Saturday it was the London Basque Society’s Christmas meal. It’s one of the annual event that help mark out my language learning year.  I messed up my timing this year and arrived towards the end of the main course, but there was still some food left….and some music from a young professional musician who’s a master on the Basque trikiti (accordion).

Several of the regulars from the Basque lessons that I used to attend were there and it was good to catch up (in Basque, of course).

I also got them to put me back in their WhatsApp group. (I’d somehow dropped out of when I got a new phone in the spring.) Just the thing to share photos afterwards and to say hello to my old London Basque teacher, her partner and their new baby (all now back in Euskal Herria)!

Routine is great but disruption isn’t fatal…if your “anchors” are in place

When you’re learning a language over the long-term, there will be periods when you get knocked off course.

To return to the opening question: how then, do I sustain language learning when the demands of “life” start to get seriously in the way?

Not always very well, as you can see.

Of course, there are always things we could be doing better to keep studying when life gets much busier or we’re on the road.

Here’s the thing, though: over the long term some temporary disruption to your language learning routine doesn’t really matter all that much, so long as we have some fundamental anchors in place.

I mean an underlying framework you can go back to: a study routine with quality materials that appeal to you; opportunities to work in a focussed way with a teacher or exchange partner; a social context including regular (even if infrequent) events and real relationships with other learners and native speakers.

How do you cope when the things get busy? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

The post Learning Basque as life gets in the way appeared first on How to get fluent, with Dr Popkins.

Arriving

The trip really got off to a cracking start.   Michael was a great host in Bilbao the Saturday I landed.  As the course started at 8.45 on Monday morning, I had to be in Lazkao the night before.  I arrived at Beasain, the rather larger town a couple a mile and a half or from Lazkao, five-ish on Sunday night.    Couchsurfing.com came up trumps again and within twenty minutes of my Lazkao host, Felix, meeting me off the bus, we were at the village festival at Ataun San Gregorio, another couple of miles up the road.  I felt like I’d arrived in the real Basque Country and, best of all, I was using my broken Basque all evening with Felix and his friends.   I’ve tried to convey a taste of the journey ad that first evening in Ataun in that vlog of the journey here.

The following morning Felix refused to tell me the way to the school on the grounds that I should practise asking directions out “in the field”.  I managed to do that and there was just time for a quick coffee and croissant in one of Lazkao’s many cafés before I found my way to the Maizpide. It’s a squarish, three storey building built, I guess, around the early 1990s, with a large portico at the front.

The beginning was very low-key, I was helped find my name in the group lists on the noticeboard in the entrance hall and pointed in the direction of my class.  After a couple of minutes, our teacher, Josune, arrived, gave us our room keys and a one-page information sheet.  Then we got stuck into the lesson first lesson.  The group was small, only six students (now down to four as one person decided to move up a group, another down one).

Our classroom. Sleuths among you will be able to work out whether we’re a bunch of young – or middle-aged – students.  Answers in the comments section, please!

Fellow students and social life

I’ve found my time here so far to be a very easy and positive social experience.

The bulk of the students is fairly evenly distributed from mid twenties to mid forties with a few older.  There’s nobody really young (it’s a course for adults).

Most come from different parts of the Basque Autonomous Region (the three western most of the historic Basque provinces).  The only other non-Spanish citizens this time are three students from France and me.

If I’d come in July or August, rather than September, maybe there would have been one or two more foreigners, such as students and academics taking advantage the summer vacation.  Then again, Basque identity and the requirement to know Basque in many jobs in the region (or the additional bonuses paid to those who do) are the main incentives to come, so I guess there is always an overwhelming “domestic” contingent, just like there is in Welsh courses held in Wales (Welsh is my other “minority” language).

Exploring Lazkao

We have very structured and full-on days here.  There are four hours in the morning  from nine o’clock (with a half-hour coffee break), one and three-quarter hours for lunch and then another two hours lessons.

After the lessons, there’s barely time to drop your things off in your room before the start of a one hour “workshop” (loosely named).   You stick with one activity throughout, chosen from sports, crafts, walking, dancing.  The activities are a chance to meet other students from other groups and level and are a good opportunity to explore the town of Lazkao and the surrounding area.

The town feels rather larger than I expected (population, about 5,500) and the centre seems to have been mostly constructed in the last fifteen years or so, presumably in the boom times. It is dominated by the court for playing pelota (the Basque national game, a bit like squash, without the racquets) and a large paved area next to it, lined with trees.  The area (including the court itself) doubles as the primary school playground and is also a real focus in the evenings, as there are several cafés nearby.

There are a few historic buildings in town, including two working monasteries, Santa Teresa de Jesús (Dominican) and Santa Ana (Cistercian) and a seventeenth century palace.

There’s a fast flowing stream (wannabe river) through the centre too.  There’s a modern cinema. Most of the shops are small, local operations.

On walks along the roads out-of-town, we’ve also seen some typical Basque features such as apple orchards (cider is a big thing), traditional family farm houses (“basseriak”) and also a lot of local industry which does nothing to beautify but everything to solidify local life.

Lazkao is about sixty-three percent Basque speaking.  I’m hearing some Spanish on the streets but generally it feels very Basque.  Most of the public and commercial signage is bilingual or just in Basque.  As in many Basque places, quite a few people have Basque flags hanging from their balconies.

The only direct interaction I’ve been having with the locals (apart from Felix, of course) has been ordering espressos one of the nearby cafés during the morning or lunch break when we have been going in small groups and the occasional shop purchases.  On the first Tuesday my Basque was in action at the local pharmacy as I brought ibuprofen and lozenges into play as my chest infection seemed to get worse.

Eat yourself fluent

Besides lessons and the “workshops”, the other real focus is meal-times.  As I’ve been down with a cough a lot of the time and unable to keep up my usual thrice-weekly half hour jogs.  It’s a good job that every morning begins with squeezing three oranges for fresh juice.  I may leave with a spare tyre round my waist due to all the bread and wine I’m having with lunch and dinner but my biceps or whatever the arm muscles are that I’m working out at the juice squeezer will be “to die for”.  At least in my right arm

The food is typical Spanish fare and there’s plenty of it.  There’s always basic salad of lettuce, tomato, sliced onions, tasty olives.  There are no desserts (probably just as well) but there is lots of fruit.  Juicy nectarines have replaced apples towards my five a day.  But why no cheese?  It seems strange, given its importance in the culture of the area.

In the dining hall we sit at two long tables.  The division is not policed, but one is for intermediate and advanced students and one for the elementary level students like me.  It works well.  Our teachers eat with us and, more generally, seem generous with their time.   There’s lively conversation, even including the mechanics of the language (this goes down well with a language geek like me and is evidence of the high the level of motivation there seems to be among students).   Given that almost everyone else has Spanish as a common native language, I’m surprised and impressed that I’ve heard so little of it.  I guess it helps that during the first two weeks, there hasn’t been a complete beginners’ group (which I think is quite unusual).

Spanish omelet and wine, in the “jangela”

Other facilities at the school are a games room with table football and table tennis and a TV room.  There’s excellent wifi throughout the building but a computer room with desktops as well for people who want it.

Ordizia

On the first Wednesday morning, walked to Beasein’s rival for local supremacy, Ordizia under the blazing sun.  The first eight or nine days here there was a real late summer heat wave.  Oridizia is known for its fair and cheese festival.  There was even a text about this in one of the units we’ve worked through in by London Basque classes.

The event took place in the pelota court again, with some leading Basque chefs as judges.  I was told that sometime prize cheeses sell for thousands of euros for a full cheese.

Big cheeses at the Ordizia cheese championships

Pintxo pote

Thursday nights – pintxo pote, for which read a more civilised form of the English pub-crawl.  Why more civilised?  One, smaller quantities of liquid: as regular visitors to Spain will know, you can oder a kaña or zurito, both much smaller than the almost compulsory pints drunk in Britain.  Two: pintxos – Basque tapas – snacks – an array of which are out on plates along the bar.  You pay for the drink and get a  pintxo for free.

This “two for one” deal is a new tradition – brought in by inventive bar owners to tempt people out again after the 2008 world financial crisis.  It seems to be working very well in Lazkao, though the pintxos aren’t a patch on the wonderful creations I’ve tried on the Gipuzkoan coast (Donostia, Zarautz).

Bertsoliaria concert

On the first Friday after the evening meal, two bertsolari gave us a demonstration of their art, improvised sung verse.  This is a mainstay of Basque culture and the big championships fill halls of thousands.

The alacrity is mind-blowing, even if I can’t understand much of what they’re saying yet.  There are presumably certain tricks you can learn, such as chains of rhyming words, but I really don’t know how they do it.

Go North!

There were lessons as normal on the first Saturday morning.   With our teacher’s permission, my classmate Mikel and I bunked off from the shorter Saturday afternoon session for a trip to the North.

That’s the part of Euskal Herria which is in the French State, “le Pays Basque” as it’s known in the dominant regional dialect of degenerate Vulgar Latin.*  Our destination was St John Pied de Port, or, to give it what my Cadogan Guide delightfully and quite correctly calls its “real name”, Donibane Garazi.

(*J O K E – French, je t’adore!).

I’ve long wanted to visit the French part of Euskal Herria.  There are three northern provinces, deliberately subsumed in the sprawling department of Pyrénees Atlantique.  I had a magical dream about the north on the first night here which seems rather bizarre.  The idea of it must have got under my skin.

The cue for the trip was the chance to see a “pastoral”, a traditional kind of sung and chanted play, performed in a series of short, episodes, performed (you guessed it) in the pelota court.  This year the theme was the life of Katalina Erauso (1592-1650), the “Nun Lieutenant”.    A trilingual book of the text was on sale, which, in retrospect, I should have bought.

I think I may have baulked if I’d known in advance that it was going to go on for three hours, without and interval.

I wasn’t bored though.  The was lots that was unusual to see.  A woman sitting at a small table at the back left of the stage waved red and green flags, seemingly directing the players.  Another woman standing beside her signalled the start of each new act by turning the page of a large flip-pad.

The performance itself was a visual feast and I was engaged trying to understand snippets of the songs even if I had no sense of the progress of the story.  A fun highlight was sheep on stage and the various choruses were rousing, with everyone on stage for the finale.

Don’t they say actors should never work with children or animals? Sheep on stage, the Donibane Pastorala.

Before the play, we had time to explore the town a little.  It was lovely, with its picturesque river and old packhorse-style bridge, historic defensive walls and gate and old centre.

Old bridge, centre of Donibani Garazi

The French Republic’s Jacobin hostility in law and state policy to indigenous languages with as much or more claim than French to a bit of respect had me braced to be very depressed and disappointed with the linguistic situation on the ground.  In fact, once I got over the indignation of the lack of Basque signage on the main motorway in (they do occasionally manage Spanish), I pleasantly surprised.   There was more Basque to be heard and seen than I expected.

Language aside, the town is clearly milking its Basque image, too.  There were quite a few shops overflowing with  kitsch souvenirs: fridge magnates, berets, flags, cheap plates and mugs festooned with local symbols (in this case the Basque flag, the Basque symbol or the sheep logo used for marketing).  I love checking out such emporiums.  “Naff nationalism”?  Bring it on!

House of Tat, Donibane Garazi

I knew that they play rugby football around places like Toulouse in south-west France but I hadn’t realised that love of the game stretched as far south as the French Basque Country.  I’m not sure whether it’s giving pelota a run for its money, but there’s a field on way to the Donibani Garazi pelota court.  I’ve seen posters for rugby games in Beasain as well.

The rugby field at Donibane Garazi

I want to go back in the North before too long.  There’s the famous coastline Miarritz (Biarritz) and Donibane Lohizune (St Jean de Luz) to visit.  There’s also Baiona (Bayonne) and the ultimate in Basque exploration: the far-flung, sparsely populated language stronghold of Zuberoa (Soule) with its capital, Maule-Lextarre.

Sunday hike to Ataun

Sunday there were no lessons.  Instead, were offered the choice of two walks.

The “long” walk, which involved a relatively arduous walk up one of the local peaks.  What was billed as the “short” option was walk to the town of Ataun San Gregorio (where I’d spent my first night here with Felix).  Give my cough and not having packed any proper walking boots shoes, I opted for Ataun.

Just for the record, had it not been for these convincing excuses, I’d obviously have been at the front of the thrill-seeking, extreme-sporting, adrenaline rushed pack on the long walk.  Cautions and sedate, moi?

As it turned out, even the short walk was not actually so short.  We left at 9am with mist covering the tops of the hills.  It was one of those beautiful mornings where the autumn is gently reminding you that summer doesn’t last forever.  Later it got very warm and I was glad I’d packed the factor fifty.

Ataun San Gregorio

Ataun municipality is a long ribbon a valley road with three more-or-less separate centres.  We stopped for a coffee in the first of the three, Ataun San Martin and then carried on along the river-side path to San Gregorio and the Jose Miguel Barandiaran Museum.

JMB (1889-1991) was one of those archeologist-anthropologist scholars for whom I’ve got a lot of time, rooted but international, theoretical and empirical, somebody who seems to have done a lot for Basque studies.

There’s a great little watermill at the museum that we were shown round too.

Outside the museum with our guide

Into the second week….tired but happy

One week in and I was thoroughly enjoying the whole experience.  Felt like I wanted to slow the wheels down, as that Joni Mitchell song says.

Where was my Basque at this point?  Still pretty Tarzanish.   Given the amount of time and effort I’d put into the language before this course even started, I should perhaps be more frustrated with my own performance.   Yet with a full timetable of six hours a day in class, I’ve just been getting on with it and not thinking much about the bigger picture.  I am speaking just Basque all the time, though, and I guess I shouldn’t lose sight of that.

If I was more disciplined, I could be squeezing in an extra hour’s study a day but the time has been going on the blog or drifting between emails, Facebook and twitter.  Plus,  I often find switching off at night difficult and with a new location, a head full of ideas and my chest infection, I’ve been feeling increasingly tired.

The bedrooms are pretty basic but fine.   All the rooms have two or three beds, most are quite a bit bigger than mine.  I’m on my own, though and I’m very glad that’s how it worked out.  What with my coughing though the night any roommate would surely have been complaining mightily by now.

My lack of was sleep not helped during the first few nights by the acoustics up on the top (bedroom) floor of the building.  I got off relatively lightly because my room is inner facing but those whose rooms were next to the road which runs by the school were grumbling a bit on the first few nights.  The long, bare, echoey tiled corridors and noisy doors didn’t help.  Then there was the atmospheric local soundtrack:  morning church bells and the local cockerels in full voice at 5am.

I belatedly kitted myself out with a pair of earplugs.

On the second Tuesday I awoke for the first time here after seven or so rather than five or so hours. What a relief!

That evening I met up again with my Couchsurfing host Felix for a drink.  It was very good of him to text me to check up how I was doing.  It was a chance to practise my Basque with a native speaker, including asking some questions about the standing of the language in the area, how much it is spoken in the different towns and villages, generational differences and government policies.

On the second Wednesday, a couple of musicians from Ataun put on a concert for us in the cinema at Maizpide (which is rather impressive with its almost art-deco style and Basque flag).

Live Basque music in the Maizpide cinema

The first time I felt some real advance in how I’m using the language was yesterday evening, out for the second time for pintxo potes.  I really got talking with some of the students from the intermediate and advanced groups.  It was very rough and ready but it did feel like proper conversation.

We all made our way back for what was for most students the last evening.  Though I’m here for a month, each course is two weeks long.  I’ve simply booked two in a row.  When I go back on Monday, apart from one or two other continuers, there’ll be a whole new cohort of students.

The teachers handed out lyric sheets for a sing-song.  This was great fun, the only fly in the ointment for me that my temperature was rising and my coughing was getting worse again.

This morning (Friday) I decided I had to see a doctor.  I’d kept putting it off because of the hassle I expected around the admin and because I was generally feeling better during the day.  But it’s been over a week now and I’m off to stay with my old friend A, the Welsh-speaking Catalan, in Iruñea (Pamplona) this weekend.  It’s unfair to turn up as a guest with something that may be infectious.   I really I don’t want to be under the weather for the second week, either.

Jone, one of the school leaders, kindly took me over and it turned out to be no trouble at all.  I presented my European Union health card (use it while you can) and was seen within half an hour.  All in Basque.

For all that, I was only prescribed a cough medicine.  I’m all for the restrictive use of antibiotics….but couldn’t the crackdown apply just to other people?  At least my codeïna fosfato  was one from behind the counter which made me feel a bit better at once.

I’ve been writing this on my laptop on the train from Beasain and now I’m in Pamplona station, computer out again, waiting to be collected by A’s wife, G.

It’s a miracle I arrived.  I had to change trains at a place called Araia, where the station something of a “wayside halt”.  Unmanned stations always spook me.  There was only one other person who got off the train with me, a young guy who sensed at once that I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.  He addressed me first in Spanish but switched to Basque when I asked him in Basque whether he spoke it and he told me which platform to wait on.

The train arrived virtually straight after he’d left.  There was no number or destination on it but it was more or less the scheduled time, so I jumped on board.  Inside, there was no more information beyond a ticker sign announcing the next destination. As we went back in the direction I’d come from and through the last couple of station once again, I had visions of an embarrassing anticlimax of a weekend back in Beasain but it turned out it to be the right one.  I was too embarrassed to ask anyone  whether I was on the Pamplona train but it turned out we forked off again and I was in Pamplona within an hour and fifteen minutes after I left Beasain.

Here in the station café, it all feels very Spanish.  I was served a small beer by a bulky six-foot señor in his late fifties, all inky black hair growing grey, pot belly, yellow-brown skin and moustache.  He did not seem at all impressed with my request in Basque for a small beer.  A supporter of the odious Partido Popular (or it’s thinly disguised local little sister the Navarrese People’s Party), no doubt.  I paid my dos euros, said gracias and took to my table, demonstrably unfurling my copy of Berria, the Basque languages’s one daily newspaper (just bought at the newspaper stand in the station hall), as I sat at my formica table by the slot machines.  It was a bit of a pose as I can’t understand the articles properly yet, I can make out more than I could two weeks ago, though.  It’s starting to feel more natural, too

Bilingualism Pamplona station cafe style

I hope you’ll stay tuned for the next posts in project Basque Intensive.  I’m doing a video about life at Maizpide, including short interviews with fellow students and one about my trips out and about, including to Ordizia and Donibane Garazi.  Do you know this part of the world?  Has travelling to use you target langauge or attend a course helped you?  Let me know your experiences or plans in the comments below or by email (address under the “About”) tab at the top of the site and, if you enjoyed this post,  please do share it.

Next in series: FOUR – second half diary

The post Basque Intensive! 3: half way diary appeared first on How to get fluent, with Dr Popkins.

The commitment to regular study in round 4 of Brian Kwong’s initiative was a great way to give structure to my Basque studies during last summer’s break in my night classes at the London Basque Society.  Reporting back daily, weekly and monthly to my study group helped with motivation.  It was also informative to share language learning tips and resources in the Facebook Group.  The Group was also a source of community and mutual encouragement.  I explained here how the Challenge is organised.  For Add1Challenge 5, I’ll limit myself to blogging about what’s new, including updates on my progress with Basque.  The 30-day milestone is 2 February; 60 days – 12 March and the big one – the 90 day finish – is 11 April.  That’s when we have to post a full conversation in our target language.

It hasn’t all been quiet on the Basque front since the end of the Challenge.  One of the points of the Challenge is to help people establish regular study habits, which they can then continue afterwards.  This rings true to performance wisdom: it’s good to have goals, but if you start off with an ambitious target and a burst of energy, it’s odds on you’ll burn out or that life will intervene to knock you off course.  To make real improvements, it’s better to chill as to the end result and embed a sustainable process.  Create a productive habit!

My formal classes resumed in late September.  Term ended with a final class in mid December and we resumed last Tuesday, 13 January and are continuing to work through the language’s fascinatingly alien structures and vocab…..and discover more about the culture of the Basque Country.  Classes or not, I have continued to study at home and on my daily commute.  I have also keep up the passive exposure to speech radio and am increasingly able to understand snippets and sometimes even the topic of a news report or discussion in the language.

You get better at speaking by – wait for it – speaking…. and three times a week feels like the minimum amount of practice.  For Add1Challenge 4 I started experimenting with Skype for language learning for the first time.  Since then, I  have continued half-hour Skype sessions with one of last year’s language partners, Iranzu.  Due to the usual Christmas and New Year festivities, I did let the sessions became too infrequent.  We resumed this week.   It is certainly getting easier to chat at a basic level.  I had also able to do this with other guests during two lively events: the meal on the Day of the London Basque Society (Elkartearen Eguna) on 25 October and the Basque Society Christmas party (Olentzero Bazkaria) on 13 December.

Elkartearen Eguna 2014 Bazkiria – London Basque Society Day Dinner 2014

As with Add1Challenge4, would-be participants in round 5 had to make a short application video.  Mine went in at the very last minute.  The coming months already looked too busy for this additional commitment.  Then I realised that I this was exactly why I needed to sign up: to make sure that my Basque learning is not limited to my Tuesday night class and rushed homework the night before.  In the application I recommit myself to my Add1Challenge4 schedule of working in the language an hour a day, five days a week and also reveal my punishment if I fail to maintain the pace.  The delivery is a bit stilted at the beginning, but I do warm to my theme (well, sort of) :

There are about eighty Challengers this time.  Brian has divided us into eight groups.  They are lightheartedly competing against each other to see which has the most members able to stick to their schedules.  Mandarin is by far the most popular language (I counted fifteen Challengers), followed by Japanese , French and German on ten each.  Then come Spanish and Italian – six each; Cantonese – five.   Besides me, there are some other “lone wolf” learners (Arabic, Turkish, Esperanto, Burmese, Indonesian….).  It’s also good to see another marginalised language in the list along with my Basque: Máirín is starting Scottish Gaelic. 

It’s great to see some familiar faces from Add1Challenge4.  Also on board are several friendly faces from the Polyglot community, notably Judith Meyer, organiser of the Polyglot Gathering (Berlin), who is learning Hebrew from scratch.  Brian himself is continuing learning Japanese.

As in Add1Challenge4, we are all in a mini “mastermind group” – three learners who check in via Facebook chat once a week to update each other on progress.  My two partners there are Richard, from Ontario, who’s learning Spanish and Cynthia (New York City, Korean).  I aim to put more into the wider Facebook discussions this time round.  I was a bit slow off the mark in +1C4.  The main problem is the juggling the time it takes against study time and other commitments.

As a yardstick against which to measure our progress, we were also asked to record ourselves speaking our target language.   Some complete beginners talked about their steps to learn a new alphabet or to find a teacher and were perhaps able to share the odd phrase, culled from a crisp new textbook.  People continuing with a language had more to work with.  If I am not arrested for the crimes against the Basque language committed in the clip below, I will post some more as we move through the Challenge.  After making the recording, I kicked myself for a host of basic mistakes.  No doubt I make many others that I’m not even aware of.   Ok, I’d usually say embrace mistakes as jolts forward on the road to mastery…. but hey, that’s my advice for other people.  As I joked to my fellow participants, for me the only way is up (I hope!)

UPDATE: On 11 April a bunch of us successfully completed the Add 1 Challenge 5.  I’ll be posting again about the experience soon.

The post Back in an on-line language learning group or “Carry on Basque” as Add1Challenge 5 kicks off appeared first on How to get fluent, with Dr Popkins.