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Photo Courtesy: The Los Angeles Times

Sunday’s L.A. Times featured an interview with Russell Harvard, lead-actor in “Tribes,” a current play at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum.  Harvard (also known for his role as the adult HW in P.T. Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood”) is cast in the lead role as Billy, a young deaf man who must convince his dysfunctional family to approve of his relationship with Sylvia, a woman losing her hearing.  Among the topics discussed with Harvard are growing up in a deaf family, the sense of community among deaf individuals and his appreciation for ASL (American Sign Language).

Photo Courtesy: Literaturwerkstatt

Lyrikline.org is a multilingual poetry website sponsored by Berlin’s Literaturwerkstatt (literature workshop).  Through audio recordings, users can experience poems recited in the original language, accompanied by at least one text translation. A result of the work of over 800 poets, at present there are 7,844 poems, 58 mother tongues and 10,660 translations available for the website’s visitors .

From lyrikline.org:

“Lyrikline.org has successfully addressed the seemingly impossible task of linking poetry, the oldest literary art form there is, with the newest form of communication, the Internet.  At the push of a button it is now possible to listen to poems read by the author in his or her native tongue.  When spoken by the human voice, the sound, melody and rhythm of a poem are transformed into music.

Needless to say, poems are related to the real world and have their own inherent meaning. You can also read them in translation as you would do in a multilingual anthology.”

The link to the website features a database of poems and recordings that can be arranged by author name, language, text edition and translation.

Jared Romney from SpeakingLatino.com recommends Portuguese for Spanish speakers as a stepping stone for learning more difficult languages.  He writes: “before committing to a thousand hours of Chinese classes, try honing your skills with a smaller step towards Portuguese.  This way, when you do commit to some of the more complex languages, your language learning ability will be well-practiced and streamlined.  Portuguese is a logical next step.  It is different enough from Spanish that you will learn new LA skills, but so similar that you will be fluent extremely fast.”

Romney breaks down his article into the categories of Grammar, Pronunciation and Vocabulary to best describe the similarities between Spanish and Portuguese.  Vocabulary receives the most attention, as the tips he provides for this category offer the quickest path to understanding Portuguese.

With respect to word endings, he provides a chart with some of the more common word endings in Spanish along with their Portuguese equivalent:

Spanish | Portuguese
-ción, sección | -ção, seção
-sión, prisión | -são, prisão
-able, saludable | -avel, saudável
-dad, universidad | -dade, universidade
-miento, descubrimiento | -mento, descubrimento
-gia, tecnología | -gia, tecnologia

If you know Spanish and are also studying Portuguese, what other similarities with Spanish have you found helpful for learning the language?

Abdellatif Laâbi. Photo Courtesy: Mosaic Rooms

Roland Glasser with the blog Arabic Literature reports on the public reading by Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laâbi at London’s Free Word Centre on February 18th.  The reading was held at the launch of his newest book of poems, the dual-language “Poems/Poèmes.”  Instead of Arabic, Laâbi’s’ poetry is written French, a fact that draws considerable attention from his audiences given his country of origin.

Glasser writes:

“Abdellatif Laâbi is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, yet is considered by many to be not only Morocco’s foremost contemporary poet, but one of the most important poets writing today.  Just three years ago, he was awarded the Goncourt Prize for Poetry, France’s highest literary award.”

During the event, Laâbi was asked why he writes in French, a language imposed on Moroccans during the period of French colonial rule.

“‘Every mother tongue is imposed, just like every colonial language, so why not write in whatever language you wish? […] It’s no bad thing to find yourself between two or three cultures.  Count yourself fortunate to be an agent of dialogue between these cultures.’”

If you are studying a language, in what ways has this experience developed your understanding of another culture?  How do you view language as an instrument for intercultural understanding?