Unknown 1 - 00:07
Hello and welcome back to How to Learn a Language, the podcast that pretty much does what the name might suggest.
I'm Lindsay from Lindsay Does Languages, your host for the show.
And yeah, this episode we're going to be talking about something that is very much at the core of learning any language and something that is continually a problem for many language learners.
Always something on people's minds and it doesn't have to be that way because there's ways that we can make this much more enjoyable.
And that thing is vocabulary as you may have guessed from the title if you've seen the title and clicked on this.
And that's what we're going to be talking about in this episode.
But first, a few quick reminders.

Unknown 1 - 00:58
So if you haven't already, if you've heard the first couple of episodes and you're like, yeah, I'm enjoying this show, then do be sure to subscribe to follow wherever you're listening and leave a review or rate as well, which I know you hear on every podcast and you kind of zone out.
I know I definitely do and I hear people say like, subscribe, follow, review, I just kind of go, whatever.
But I figured that one way to kind of maybe make you listen to this bit a bit more is to share with you something that I've enjoyed this week of podcast that I've enjoyed that I've liked that I have followed and subscribed to recently.
And this week that has been do a leaper at your service, right?
I didn't know do a leaper had a podcast and I was looking for something I think I might have typed in like Alma Dovah maybe or it came up somehow.
And there's an episode of do a leaper at your service.
There's some really interesting episodes actually, interviews, Dita Von Teese, Mo Farah, I listened to that one as well and Greta Gerwig and Alma Dovah, that's where I'm sort of up to.

Unknown 1 - 02:05
In fact, that's where I started.
There's an episode interviewing Pedramodova like, ah, so that's pretty cool.
And it's what's really cool as well is if you're learning languages, and especially if you are learning Spanish, you hear kind of the translation in action, which is cool as well.
So definitely recommend that.
And yeah, I've liked, I have followed, I have subscribed to that podcast.
And if you enjoy this one, how to learn a language, then of course you should do the same.
All right, so let's talk about vocabulary, how to learn vocabulary and remember it in any language.

Unknown 1 - 02:44
We're going to talk about something that I first discovered from learning my MA, my masters, and in particular from the sort of module, the assignment, all about second language acquisition, which essentially means how we learn languages beyond our first, our native language, your languages, right?
And that thing is called iconicity.
So instantly, we've got a new fancy linguistroki word to decipher.
And it's really not as kind of intimidating as it may sound at first.
We often think of, you know, iconic.
This is like almost in sort of common lexicon now, isn't it?
Oh, it's iconic.

Unknown 1 - 03:38
It was an iconic concert.
You would you look iconic.
And that's kind of what we want to do with our vocabulary, but in a slightly different sense.
So iconicity then is a linguistic feature that refers to the relationship between a sound or look of a word, and it's meaning.
Now, what's really interesting about iconicity is that in the past, linguists thought that words had no connection to their meaning and that it was all just random, right?
And sometimes, you know, I get this.
It's kind of like a rose by any other name would smell a sweet, right?

Unknown 1 - 04:16
Whatever a rose is called, it's still going to smell good.
And so it's just we've randomly assigned words to stuff, and that's what linguists saw in the past and a pretty famous linguist as well, disassure some of this up by saying, for a sign, there is an arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified, right?
That's the, that's the one liner that you'll hear in reference to this sort of arbitrary relationship between words and their meaning.
However, a bit more recently, linguists have been learning a lot more about the opposite of this random arbitriness, iconicity.
And even more recently, there's been some interesting to how this can be useful for language learners.
And this isn't to say that every single word that you will encounter in any language is iconic.
It's not some words have more iconicity and some are a little bit more arbitrary as we'll see, right?

Unknown 1 - 05:17
But there's lots of examples of how iconicity pops up for language learners.
And it could be on a matter of peer, co speech gestures, proscody, aka how we say words, just to give you a few examples.
And we'll talk about all three in this episode.
So iconicity then, a feature of language that allows us to express ourselves in ways that are visually or at least symbolically similar.
And it's different across languages.
So we can't assume that all languages will have the same degree of iconicity, right?
Japanese is a really good example to bring up here.

Unknown 1 - 05:54
So Japanese uses a lot of onomatopoeia, aka words that sound like what they mean, which can make it easier for learners to learn new words and to remember them.
Because that sound connects us to the meaning a little bit more.
It's like creating, you know, how we talk about with vocab, oh, make context and, you know, make mnemonics, make it memorable.
It's like these iconic words, these words that have iconicity kind of embedded in them already, have done that bit for you.
So it makes it a bit easier in that sense.
And Japanese, lots and lots of onomatopoeia.
So this is an example that comes up a lot in reference to this.

Unknown 1 - 06:34
Sign languages as well use lots of iconic gestures.
But it's really important to mention that not all signs are strictly iconic.
So some involve more kind of abstract symbols than others.
But it is believed that the majority of languages have some level of iconicity.
However, high or low that level is there's something there.
And a really common experiment that's been used by linguists to test this out is to show two shapes to participants, a jagged, spiky shape.
I'm going to have to describe this in podcasts, podcasts form, and a curvy, rounded shape.

Unknown 1 - 07:16
And participants are then asked to name the shapes, which is boobah, and which is kiki.
And what's really and maybe you're thinking to yourself, okay, if you can visualize this for a minute, right, visualize this jagged, spiky shape, and then visualize a curvy, rounded shape.
And think of those words, boobah and kiki.
What have you assigned those names to?
What shape gets what name in your head?
Right?
Now in most experiments across many languages, boobah gets tied to the rounded shape and kiki with the spiky one.

Unknown 1 - 07:54
It's funny, right?
And maybe, you know, you probably did the same thing.
I know even myself, I've done, I've talked about this, I've written about this many times.
But when I still hear those words and think of those shapes, automatically those words connect to those shapes, right?
It's really interesting.
And this also means that we might just have better guessing skills in a new language than we typically give ourselves credit for, right?
So it's good news in many respects.

Unknown 1 - 08:21
And there's, there's no like obvious reason why this is, but it's likely to do with the shape that our mouths make and the sound of the buh-u and the a of the boobah versus the harder kuh and e sounds of the kiki.
So if you try and make those sounds with your mouth, or if you know, if you're in public, you can kind of feel it out.
You don't have to say them out loud, but that kind of buh-u-ah and the kiki, right?
You'll notice that the shape your mouth makes feels kind of different, right?
Feels curvy and rounded versus jagged and spiky and pointy.
However, however, however, there's always a however, there have been a couple of boobah and kiki experiments that didn't share the usual results.
So, fuba is a language spoken in a pool.

Unknown 1 - 09:15
And when styles and gorn, not Harry Styles, but when styles and gorn conducted this boobah kiki test with fuba speakers in 2017, there was no clear cut.
Boobah equals round shape and kiki equals spiky shape response.
And they decided this is probably because the sound patterns needed to say boobah and kiki don't exist in that language.
Now, that isn't to say that iconicity does not exist in fuba at all, but it is interesting just to see how these things work differently in different languages.
It's a good example of how what iconicity is in a language and how we relate to that and how we understand that is often related to our own understanding of our own language or languages that we already know too.
So, what does all of this have to do with language learning?
How can we use iconicity and language learning?

Unknown 1 - 10:10
Well, it's really quite a powerful tool.
When you use it, you can learn new words, grammar and even concepts more easily and quickly.
And that's the thing that always comes up, isn't it, quick and easy language learning?
And these are the kinds of tools that when you know this, it actually makes things quicker and easier.
So, that first thing, and I mentioned these at the start of the episode, but that first thing, sort of onomatopoeia, sound symbolism, proscody.
So, some words are, of course, more iconic than others.
It will be likely easier to remember, moo and bang, than cow and gun, as we've got that direct iconic connection between the words moo and bang and their meanings.

Unknown 1 - 10:56
On the other hand, for cow and gun, it might seem like the words have been more randomly assigned and there's less to help us figure out and remember the meaning.
But hey, it's okay, that's not the end of this, right?
When we know about iconicity and we come across a word that doesn't feel instantly iconic or easily memorable, we just have to get a little bit creative.
We have to kind of craft up our own iconicity.
So, as an example of how this works in practice, let's take the word run.
Let's see how we can remember vocabulary here.
First of all, we can consider onomatopoeia, sound symbolism and proscody.

Unknown 1 - 11:37
So, is there a way that we can change how we say run in our heads?
So, maybe we're kind of putting the word to the beat of feet hitting the pavement, right?
Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run.
So, that sound that we're imagining as you are running and you're running down the street and your feet are hitting the pavement, that sound is like run, run, run, run, run, run, run, right?
So, we're giving it iconicity, right?
We're doing it for ourselves.
We're applying this kind of linguistic knowledge into our own learning.

Unknown 1 - 12:12
Secondly, then, co-speech gestures.
So, we can add in co-speech gesture.
And this is essentially about adding physicality to your vocabulary learning.
So, if you've ever come across the teaching concept of total physical response, TPR, then this might be a little bit familiar.
So, with our example of run, maybe this looks like moving your arms back and forth, as if you're running down that pavement yourself, run, run, run, run, run, run, run.
And again, you can't see me, but I'm moving my arms back and forth as if I'm running right now.
So, some co-speech gestures may be easily iconic, such as that running movement.

Unknown 1 - 12:51
However, others might be a bit more arbitrary, right?
So, if we think about another meaning of the word run, such as run the country, you'll likely have a more abstract co-speech gesture.
And that is still fine, right?
It's all about taking this knowledge, interpreting it and using it in your own way that's going to work for you, right?
And if you think run the country and you instantly think of a certain leader, and if they have something that they do some kind of expression, maybe you think of, I don't know, Donald Trump with his kind of hair.
And so, when you think run the country, you add in this gesture of like, stroking your blonde, can we call it blonde, stroking your blonde hair, or something funny that just gets you remembering that word and that meaning, and you add in that co-speech gesture, that physicality, as you're practicing
your vocab.

Unknown 1 - 13:52
Now, one of my favorite things about iconicity, that I really want to try myself, and that uses this knowledge, this concept of co-speech gestures, and gives you a second language to learn at the same time, is to learn a sign language alongside a new language.
Mind blown.
I'm so excited to try this.
I haven't yet really had the opportunity, but if you do give this a go and it works, or it doesn't work, please let me know.
So, what you can do, if you are learning Egyptian Arabic, let's say, then learn the signs in Egyptian sign language at the same time as new words in Egyptian Arabic.
And not only does this help make the Egyptian Arabic spoken words more iconic by adding in co-speech gesture, but it also lets you learn two languages at once, and they're not going to interfere with each other, they can only help.
So whenever we think about multiple languages, this is like the gold level of how to learn more than one language at once, without them interfering, without them getting in the way.

Unknown 1 - 15:04
This is something I definitely have to try.
If you try it, like I say, let me know, please email me, linseyatdoslangages.com, tell me how it goes, I need to know.
And the other thing is patterns.
So as we think again about the sound, it's also useful to actively consider connections towards in the new language that we already know.
So if we already know gun, then can we notice that shared unsound, right?
So to take, I can see, if we're looking for patterns, maybe you try adding verb endings that you know, like I-N-G or E-D, we're using English as our kind of core example here, right?
So you soon learn then that run with E-D on the end isn't a word, and run is what you're after.

Unknown 1 - 15:53
You check your regular verb list and you spot that u-A-U pattern, that kind of run, run, run, in the, you know, the verb list in English, vowel change, and you think, okay, interesting, that's not a common pattern, mostly it's, you know, I can't think of a verb, play, played, played, whatever,
right?
And so you spot these patterns.
So even when things don't correlate, even if it isn't run, right, you've still spent more time with that word.
And if this is interesting to you, it can be fun as well here to look into etymology, which is all about where words come from, kind of like word history, and this all helps with how to learn vocabulary to create more connections for you and make this kind of, at first glance, quite arbitrary word,
a little more iconic for you.
And whilst writing this, whilst putting this together, I did this for run, I did this etymology search for run, and in fact, Google is quite good at doing this.

Unknown 1 - 16:54
Now if you just type in a word plus that word etymology, then you often see it right away in Google, so you don't necessarily have to click through and find the website of the explanation gives you the etymology right away, which is handy.
So with run, I found that this comes from the Old English Rynnen, and as a German speaker, this reminds me of Rynnen.
Great, I've got a new connection there.
So etymology can be a useful way to help create those extra links and spot those patterns.
We're now going kind of, you know, beyond iconistic different ways that we can make things iconic.
Let's look at another example.
So you're learning adjectives in Russian, and you begin to notice a pattern emerging in the sound of the words.

Unknown 1 - 17:41
So the bigger adjectives, like big, high, wide, all have a stressed, oh, in fact, in English as well, as I've just said them, big, high, wide, my mouth is opening on that sort of eye sound, big, high, wide, right?
I'm thinking these are bigger things we're describing, and in Russian it's kind of similar, right?
I'll do this like not with a bunch of an accent, but Bolschoy, Rusoki, Shiroki, right?
Or, or, or that o, that stressed o sound is associated with the bigger stuff.
On the other hand, those opposite adjectives in Russian, small, low, narrow, again, we have this similar pattern in English where they feel smaller to say.
In Russian they often have that i, e, or u sound, and they're kind of shorter words as well.
It's as if they take up less space in your mouth to say them.

Unknown 1 - 18:40
So malinky, niski, uskii, right?
Smaller, shorter words.
So how do we use this then to learn vocabulary?
We look for patterns.
And once you consciously look for and spot these patterns, you'll eventually begin to spot them without needing to think about it too much.
And it's spotting these patterns that makes iconicity help you learn languages.
So how do we apply this, right?

Unknown 1 - 19:07
Once you know these basic concepts of iconicity, we want to apply this further into your own learning too, right?
So in essence, what iconicity does for language learners is it makes words more memorable.
And there's a lot that you can do to take your vocabulary learning once you've already made things more memorable.
So think about how you can make even the most arbitrary of words more iconic and more memorable for you.
Maybe it's about adding visual images or gifts or short videos to your digital flashcards.
Maybe it's creating stories and context for new words to help you learn.
It could even be making the most of things like augmented reality and virtual reality apps and games for languages, but really the core message to take away from this, to take away from this concept of iconicity of making things memorable, is that this can be applied to your own language learning in

Unknown 1 - 20:04
your own ways.
So think about how these things relate.
Next time you're learning a word, is there something you can do to make it more iconic?
And if vocabulary is something that you're interested in, in learning better and remembering easier is something that you're like, yeah, that's what I want.
That's what I want with my vocab.
Then I have a little something for you.
I have a mini course called vibrant vocab.

Unknown 1 - 20:38
If you ever attended, I hosted a workshop once called how to learn vocabulary once and for all.
This is like a new refreshed, updated version of that.
And vibrant vocab, if you struggle to remember the most important vocab in the language or learning, if you have ever tried to start with like a blank canvas on a new app, and then just ended up with that to review pile of words, or if you've got stacks and stacks of notebooks with the same words
written again and again and you're thinking, is this really the only way to learn a language?
No, it's not you.
You are not the problem here.
It's the way that we're often taught or not taught really to learn words.

Unknown 1 - 21:20
And that's why I'm a vibrant vocab, so that you can really learn how words work and how to use this knowledge to help you learn words.
And the biggest thing that you can instantly do to help you remember words, spoiler alert, that's all about iconicity, which is what we've talked about today.
And talk about all the different ways that this can be applied to your learning.
If you're thinking, yes, I want more vocab.
I want to help understand this, figure out ways to make this work for me and for my situation and my languages, then definitely take a little look and get yourself a copy of a vibrant vocab.
lindseydoeslanguage.com forward slash vocab, that will take you to the page with all the info that you need to know.
And if you do have any questions, feel free to reach back out.

Unknown 1 - 22:06
Lindsay at does languages.com, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
So yeah, ooh, another episode of how to learn a language.
Oh, it's always so much fun doing these.
I love having the chance to speak things, you know, like I really love writing.
By the way, if you do want to know more about how to learn a language in general, I have a lot of blog articles that have written over the years that I'm currently in the process of like going through and updating and all of that stuff.
But that's a long process.
There's like over 500 posts to go through.

Unknown 1 - 22:49
But yeah, do have a look if there's something that you're curious about on the website, lindseyreslanguage.com.
There's a tab for blog.
And when you click that, there's a search bar on that page as well.
So you can just search in for the word that you want to know more about if it's vocab, if it's grammar, if it's speaking, if it's goals, whatever it is, and you'll see everything there as well.
So yeah, have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your day.
And I look forward to welcoming you into a vibrant vocab.
All right, link's all in the description.

Unknown 1 - 23:23
And I will see you next episode.
And of course, as we discussed at the beginning, do leave a review.
Follow, like and subscribe.
All of those words that you hear at the end and at the start of every podcast and every YouTube video you watch, there's a reason for it.
And the reason is that it helps new people find the show.
It helps more people learn languages better, which at the end of the day is kind of what we all want, right?
So yeah, if you enjoyed this episode, do pop us a little rating, a little review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Unknown 1 - 23:58
All right, have a wonderful rest of your day.