A particular Calvin & Hobbes Sunday strip features a unique meeting of cultures: humans and a race of shape shifting extraterrestrials.
And the latter’s ambassador is clearly a fast learner when it comes to mastering other languages. After Calvin gets tossed out of his house with a scolding that he’s going to miss his school bus in panel 1, the visitor from the stars lands in an egg-yolk colored spacecraft in front of him in panel 3.
It hops out, speaks. Its language is gibberish at first, cuneiform from beyond the solar system.
Calvin responds, terrified and mesmerized: “Uh…greetings. My name is Calvin.”
Then, in a puff of smoke, the visitor transforms into…another Calvin. And in true mockingbird fashion, it echoes the real one’s words, though they come out sounding like a toddler at first.
“Grittings. Ma nam is Kahlfin. Grittings. Ma nam is Kahlfin.”
Remember in Elf when Buddy can’t stop saying “Francisco?” Same vibe.
“Um…yes. Well, Calvin, here’s your lunchbox. Have a good day at school,” Real Calvin says before dashing off to joyride in the creature’s Galaxy Camry.
“Hoffa gud tay,” Mimic Calvin replies.
***
When we start learning a new language, we’re all the alien pronouncing Calvin’s name poorly and awkwardly. And who can blame us? Pronunciation, conjugation, slang, writing, spelling; the task is basically a 10-billion piece puzzle.
Luckily, Jackson County Library Services cardholders have Mango, an interactive language teaching database that boasts several tools to help make this process buttery smooth. The service – completely free to use on the JCLS website with your library card after taking maybe 15 seconds to create an account – boasts videos, conversational and grammar goals, quizzes, and pronunciation tools. Users can also record their voice and compare it to native speakers to get the diction just right.
Oh, and songs. Music is one of the most meaningful ways to ensure learning sticks. You think I could recite all 50 U.S. states in alphabetical order without a song I learned in elementary school? Not a chance. “Fifty Nifty United States” has haunted me for more than 30 years. I have it stuck in my head right now.
“One of my challenges with learning language is speaking it,” JCLS digital selection librarian April Bozada-Armstrong says of Mango. “I’m OK at reading Spanish, but I can’t speak it. So to hear native speakers say things, I can kind of practice some of those conversational phrases. It’s really useful.”
More than 70 languages are available to choose from. You have your popular choices, including Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese, and even ones that are more obscure. There’s a “Pirate” category, for example.
Side note: For the foreseeable future, I’ll be bellowing “Belay yer carousin’” (i.e. “stop messing around”) at my kids when they start playing in the middle of cleaning their room.
“It kind of just gives you a good taste of language, I would say,” April says. “You can go deeper after beginning your language journey with Mango. It’s a really good place to start.”
Once April has built up her confidence and skill enough, she wants to take a next step with one of the Spanish Conversation Group events at JCLS’s White City branch, intended for attendees to practice their Spanish speaking with others.
In addition to opening new avenues for conversation and understanding, there’s also mounting evidence that learning one or more new languages can help slow cognitive decline.
A recent Scientific American piece pointed to a study involving more than 80,000 people that suggested “people who are multilingual are half as likely to show signs of accelerated biological ageing as are those who speak just one language,” according to the piece.
From the article:
“The effects of multilingualism on ageing have always been controversial, but I don’t think there has been a study of this scale before, which seems to demonstrate them quite decisively,” says Christos Pliatsikas, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Reading, UK. The paper’s results could “bring a step change to the field”, he adds.
They might also “encourage people to go out and try to learn a second language, or keep that second language active”, says Susan Teubner-Rhodes, a cognitive psychologist at Auburn University in Alabama.
***
This all sounded incredible. I’ve always been interested in my German heritage – fun fact, my last name means “Arrow” in German – so I decided to put Mango to the test.
After the quick signup, I selected German as my language. A whole study guide popped up, broken out by chapters and sub-chapters that covered a wealth of territory on the language. There were sections on:
- Small talk
- Language origins
- Places
- Getting directions
- Food & culture
- Compliments
- Household items
- Hobbies
- Relationships
- Events
- Education
And dozens more. It covered a lot of territory. I just skimmed, in awe and excited. But I couldn’t stay. I had a blog to finish.
Here’s a crumb for you for now: the next time your spouse or mom or whoever cooks something for you and asks you if it was good, say “Ja, es ist wirklich lecker.” Trust me.
Or you could find another phrase from one of the other 70-something available languages on Mango intended to compliment good food and use that. Then keep going. A whole new way of communicating awaits you, and the only key you need to access it is a library card.
“Really get in there and play around with the different modules of learning that they have,” April says.
And remember to “hoffa gud tay,” too.