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 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.

The previous post is here.

This section is essentially just a description of several language study methods that are based mainly on the theories of Stephen Krashen, especially the Input Hypothesis. This is the actual, concrete, how-to of language acquisition. There's not much else to say besides I had the idea of presenting them in order of most-dependent-on-others to most-independent, and coincidentally also the order that would be most productive to move through in your own studies as you progress.

The previous post is here.

These are a couple more sections following the first, taking a minor detour to cover some topics I consider important before getting into specific methodologies (the next post). I happen to currently be learning one endangered heritage language of mine (Irish) and one "dead" Indigenous language (the program prefers calling it "sleeping" instead, so I'll use that going forward), and it happens to be the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages, so I wanted to take some time to address language acquisition in cases where you really don't have a lot of input that is both comprehensible and compelling (missing one or the other quality). I do recognize that I'm a white woman here, but I've also been through the first few years of an Indigenous language program and have helped out with preparing material and occasionally teaching newer students- I'm speaking from experience and collaboration rather than disconnected prescriptions.