red lez

I was going to wait until I had the art finished for it to start promoting it publicly, but now's as good a time as any- the zine is done! It's available on itch.io here!

What you get for $10 USD:

• an explanation of the theory of language acquisition and principles of applying it
• summaries of a number of study methods based on language acquisition principles and a guide on creating your own
• an application section using the constructed language toki pona, including a couple (very) short stories and a dictionary
• an overview of basic linguistics useful for guiding language study, going from phonetics to semantics, with plain-English explanations of the relevant jargon- I went around and got feedback from a variety of people to make sure this was accessible to a wide audience

This thing is more like a small booklet than a zine- it's meant to be a pretty comprehensive intro into everything you might need to get started with learning languages, with names, terms, and links to useful supporting material that is out of the scope of the zine itself.

I'm using the sales from this zine to help with living expenses and transition costs (e.g. laser hair removal, voice training, etc.), so if you find this helpful, please share it around!

The thing with language acquisition is that it necessarily requires broad input. You're usually not going to get that from a structured setting specifically catering towards learners of a particular language. What you might be able to find are Story Listening classes modelled after Beniko Mason's work, but those aren't the most common.

I would push back a little on the idea that you NEED structured classes to learn a language. That's how you might learn about a language, which can be a speed boost for language acquisition, but it will not get you to actually acquiring a language on its own.

If you struggle with self-motivation towards learning, the solution is probably not in relying on external motivation, because it can be unreliable. You need consistency in order to acquire a language. What you can do instead is cultivate your interest and curiosity in a language until they overpower your reluctance- once you're at that point, if you start engaging with the language in question and forming your own ideas about it, making your own observations, etc. you will be invested enough that the self-motivation comes naturally.

You can do this by a bit of immersion, maybe watching/reading/listening the same piece of media several times, or bringing yourself into a social situation where you don't have to use the language in question, but are surrounded by it for extended periods, e.g. a coffee shop in a part of a city predominantly composed of speakers of that language. As long as you don't put pressure on yourself to understand or produce the language, just sit and observe and take it in, it will help build your curiosity and interest.

but I'm having major art block around filling out the illustrations for it. I've got ideas, but major blank page syndrome. It's been awhile since I've done art for this kind of thing. Anyone have some good warmup practices?

The previous post is here.

The last couple posts were a bit long-winded, so this one will be a little shorter. It's a quick introduction to the International Phonetic Alphabet- the motivation for it, what it gives you, and how to make use of it.