Hmong | How to learn a language as an Adult

One of my biggest goals this year is to learn Hmong. I'm a Hmong American, and I want to retain my culture and heritage. I believe that language is a huge factor in retaining a culture, and I barely know my own. It's difficult for me to understand and converse with my grandparents. My boyfriend's parents both heavily speak Hmong and only speak a little bit of English. My church is First HMONG Baptist and the main service is mostly in Hmong, so being to understand the main message would be great. And it's just the cutest thing when little kids speak Hmong. I want my kids to know and speak Hmong, while also being able to understand and converse with them in Hmong. To begin my effort at self-teaching myself Hmong, I of course Googled "how to learn a language."

Some tips I learned: 

Don't set the wrong expectations. Learning a language isn't hard; it's just a long process. 

Gruff Davies explains in his article how the success of learning a language is much like climbing a mountain. You will need to:

• Plan the journey in stages as specific as possible. Preparing for the journey may first take absorbing the sounds of the language before serious studying. Actively listening to hours of audio to intentionally hear the sounds of the language. Watching people talk in the language you want to learn. Pronunciation is as much physical as it it mental. 
• Set yourself achievable goals-long term and short term. Make a to-do list and spread out your learning hours. Davies explains that it takes 600+ hours of study and practice to reach fluency of another language and about 200 hours of study time and 270 concepts is when learning the language will become more fluid. This is how you can realistically plan how much you will study and how many new concepts you will learn each time. At the beginning you can focus on the most common words that will be relevant to you and then continue to grow your vocabulary. 
• Expect the journey to be steepest at the start. It's okay to look stupid when you practice. You have to get over the fact that you will feel stupid at the beginning of learning a new language. Feeling stupid actually shows progression, so reward feeling stupid on your journey to learning a new language!
• Expect that it will start to get much easier after you are deeply into it. It's completely normal for the first few hundred hours to be really rough but stick it out. 
• Do anything and everything to get more exposure and to move forward. Leave your comfort zone and emerge yourself into the language. You will encounter difficulties in possibly the pronunciation, grammar, syntax, phrases, but it's important to develop you're own feel on the language to make it your own. Just like how English speakers have difference accents or way of saying words. 
• Be resourceful-there is more than one route up; make it fun! Label daily-used objects in the language you are learning, carry a dictionary at all times, listen to radio stations or songs in that language, attempt to read a news article in your new language once a day, read kids’ books written in it or translate an English book into the new language, watch subtitled shows, write your shopping list in the new language, or live-narrate parts of your day talking in the new language. Let Google and the Internet help you out!
• Test frequently to find out where you are or if you're making mistakes without realizing. Immerse your self as deeply as possible because memory will fade if it's now used. Repetition is vital; practice makes perfect! The more you invite a new language into your everyday life, the more your brain considers it as something useful. Personally, I could go to my grandma or parents to test my language skills in Hmong. I may look stupid at first, but hopefully it will begin to improve! 
• Take steps backwards if you need to-be organized. If you make mistakes, ask a person fluent in the language and fix your mistakes. 
• Learn about learning to climb faster. The faster you climb, the less you will slip out of the language.

Rote learning (a memorization technique based on repetition and recall) is shown to be an effective method for learning a language quick. Finding text with audio that you would be able to learn in a week is the first step. Listen to the audio at least ten times before attempting to learn the test. Afterwards, begin to practice recall and commit it to memory. At first it will be challenging but it will show you the importance of recall. Time should tell if it is successful; a week should be long enough to learn at least a small segment. This is because of the magic sleep has to the human memory, even daytime napping is effective. I think for this I could definitely use a film, possibly Tangled because I know my uncle and grandma have that movie Hmong-dubbed. I will definitely be trying rote learning on my journey. 

Good exercise and nutrition can help in learning, as well as learning about learning. In fact, I'm doing learning about learning a new language right now so I guess I'm already in a couple steps on my journey! 

Mountains are always quite the climb. I've gone up many, hopefully I will successfully climb this one!

Resources: 

Aparta, Krystian. Ted Talks. http://blog.ted.com/how-to-learn-a-new-language-7-secrets-from-ted-translators/

Davies, Gruff. Quora. https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-ways-to-learn-a-language-as-an-adult

Jordan, John-Erik. Babbel. https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/10-tips-from-an-expert