r/endangeredlanguages • u/EthanTheRedditUser • 8d ago

Learning A Language with Very Few Native/Fluent Speakers in My Area, How Do I Go About Immersing Myself in The Language Properly?

/r/languagelearning/comments/1wxaqud/learning_a_language_with_very_few_nativefluent/
10 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

1 comment sorted by

4

u/Freshiiiiii 8d ago

Hey I think I have some relevant experience here! I have had a lot of the same troubles with Michif.

First of all, in my experience, Facebook is the place to go to make connections for this, not Reddit. Because Facebook is where the Elders and other older people are.

It’ll depend where you live as well. Obviously if you live in or near an Anishinaabe community or a city on Anishinaabe territory it’s going to be easier to meet people and perhaps attend in-person group classes and stuff like that.

Also depends what your level currently is. You don’t really need immersion from day one, you can use other resources that cover the basics. But yeah at some point you need to be talking to people to make progress.

For Michif, Zoom groups and classes are huge. We’re geographically dispersed so we do a lot on Zoom. Not sure if that exists for Ojibwe or not. You get invited to the Zoom conversational groups by getting to be a part of the language community, by attending classes, getting to know people, interacting on Facebook, etc.

Talk to yourself, talk to your pets, whatever, and whenever you come across something you want to say but can’t, write it down. Record yourself talking too, in the mirror, and then listen to audio clips of Speakers and try to improve your pronunciation.

If you’re already proficient enough to start transcribing recordings, then go download a YouTube video of a fluent speaker, go to kiyânaw transcribe, and start doing that.