Listen furiously

One of the projects we are now working on is listening to the Yukpa language. Unfortunately there are no speakers of Yukpa here with us, but we have the next best thing- recordings that we took when we were last in the Sierra. We recorded many common phrases, like "How do you say.....", "Where are you going?"....., etc etc etc. Below, you can click to hear one of these recordings. You'll first hear David's voice saying a phrase in Spanish "What is this? (Qué es esto?) and then you'll hear the voice of Miguel, a Yukpa, saying the phrase in Yukpa 3 times. Pretty cool huh? 

After studying at Cilta, we've since realized that the best way to do recordings isn't saying the phrase in Spanish and having the person translate it into Yukpa, but instead soliciting the phrase in Yukpa in a more natural environment. But for now, this is a good start.

Research shows that the best way to learn a language is to listen to it. A LOT. hours and hours and hours, before you try to pronounce it. This is hard to do because my natural response is repeating it. But for now, we are trying to just "listen furiously", like we learned in our Second Language Acquisition class. The reason why this is so important is that every language consists of a unique combination of sounds- consonants and vowels. Since I speak English and Spanish, all the sounds from those two languages are already programmed in my brain, so to speak. The Yukpa language, on the other hand, has sounds that neither English nor Spanish have. So if I try to pronounce the Yukpa phrases immediately, I will pronounce only the sounds that are already "programmed" in brain and not the ones that are unique to Yukpa. (This is part of the reason why "foreign accents" exist- because the person is speaking a second language using only the sounds of his/her first language.) But if we listen for many many hours before trying to speak, our brains can more easily identify new sounds in Yukpa and correctly pronounce them. For example, Yukpa has a vowel that neither Spanish or English have. Of all the sounds that are now programmed in my brain, it is closest to the "u" sound in English, like in the word "you." So, upon pronouncing a Yukpa word with this sound, I used the "u" sound of English, because my brain didn't yet identify that this was in fact a totally different vowel. But with time, and advice from the rest of our team, I realized that it is indeed a different vowel, so I need to pronounce it correctly.The goal is that we will eventually be able to speak Yukpa as close as possible to a native speaker.


 So,for now we are listening, listening, listening to lots of Yukpa phrases.