Brian Loo Soon Hua

So you want to learn a rare language?

A Talk by Brian Loo Soon Hua (Linguist, uTalk)

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About this Talk

You've just watched Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and you're now hopelessly entranced by the sexy Prince Namor and and the beautiful tonal language that he speaks in the movie. You really want to learn that language and you've just found out that it is called Yucatec Mayan. Where do you go from here?

You’re an American of Vietnamese origin and you’re keen to find learning materials for the Huế dialect, your heritage language. There's just one annoying problem - all the cool movies and music from Vietnam are either in Northern or Southern dialect. You're also constantly fed up that most learning materials are in standard Northern dialect! What do you do?

You’re stationed in rural Mexico for an assignment and are interested to learn some Nahuatl. The problem is, everybody just speaks to you, the gringo, in Spanish. How do you break the linguistic ice?

Never fear, there are ways to go about this. Throughout this talk, we will explore some of the methods to learn a rarer language, specifically one with fewer learning resources compared to the more obviously common ones like Spanish, French, Mandarin or Japanese. We will also take a quick tour of some of the more interesting "exotic" languages out there.

11 January 2024, 03:00 PM

03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

About The Speakers

Brian Loo Soon Hua

Brian Loo Soon Hua

Linguist, uTalk

Over 20 years of studying phonology, morphology and syntax of indigenous languages in North America and Australia. Also, had a brief stint as a food technologist - but that was another lifetime ago. Currently works as a linguist for uTalk and a linguistics consultant with Miromaa.

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