Learning an Indigenous language is hard. Especially as an adult, especially having not grown up with the language. And I would even say (based on the experiences of others) that it's still difficult for those who did grow up with it, but don't yet speak as an adult.

As children, we would have gotten the language for free from our parents and grandparents, but due to colonization, residential schools (in Canada), the steady presence of english, and many other reasons we see a lot of communities where the youngest fluent speakers are often already grandparents.

As adults, even when do have access to "immersion environments" and fluent speakers, we still often see that language transmission doesn't happen. As a "content creator" (a term I dislike because I don't make content for the purposes of "creating" or having an audience) I hear from so many adults, parents and even sometimes grandparents, "I just want to learn my language, where do I start?". From my experience, our youngest fluent speakers are just getting older and older.

So why isn't language transmission happening?

As we transition through childhood into adulthood, our method for acquiring language (and learning in general) changes. As young children, our brains are eager for learning and are wired to absorb language and knowledge as quickly as possible. As we age however, our brains start to wire differently and focus on the activities that we need to be adept at in later phases of our lives. So just being "around" the language is no longer enough; we need to start changing our tactics to make language a focus and help our brains to anchor what we're learning as new meaning and understanding.

5 Activities to fast-track your learning

From my own experience, as well as other advanced 2L (second-language) learners, here is a list of five activities that, when used with consistency will help you fast-track your comprehension and language use:

1. Hang out with other learners.

This really shouldn't be overlooked. There are many, many benefits of hanging out with other language learers, especially if they are more "advanced" than you. This can create a sense of accountability; meeting with a fellow group of learners will take your process, something which is already "hard", and make it something you look forward to. A weekly meeting where you can practice what you've learned, ask questions, and share stories will help keep you focused on learning with consistency.

2. Understand your language's grammar

This can be a hot topic, and it would normally be something I wouldn't push. But hearing other learners of other Indigenous languages echo the same sentiment of "learn the grammar" has helped me feel more confident about the assertion. Grammar can be challenging, drilling and studying and can take years, but every learner I know that got the grammar "under their belt" has advanced relatively quickly, and spoke more confidently. If you can make it work for you, I would say it's worth your time.

3. Listen to your language daily

This seems obvious, but it's still worth repeating. Daily listening, especially if you're also doing #5 will start to solidify some of the words and meaning in your mind. I had a conversation within another language learner recently where they mentioned "it's almost like you need to know the word before you actually know the word" and this is completely true in my experience. Think about a child who recites a word to you but doesn't know what it means, "mama, what does 'sophisticated' mean?". The child doesn't know the word, doesn't know how to spell it, but has heard it enough times that they're able to recite (produce) it in order to ask about it. Listen to your language enough that you're constantly hearing words that you don't know what they mean.

4. Replace daily english phrases with your language

This was a recommendation I believe by Belinda Daniels and Andrea Custer, and a process that I still practice: every time I say something to one of my kids in english I've already thought to myself, "how do I say this in the language?" This can also be challenging, but is a meaningful way of getting daily language into your life beyond the basics of "introductions" and simple words. We've also got a mobile app kiyânaw Mentor coming out soon that will allow learners to find (and ask for) phrases that they want to learn, but the responses include audio for different dialects and even communities. More on that later :)

5. Transcribe stories

Transcribing is simply listening to a speaker and writing down what you hear. We've designed transcription software specifically for this purpose for Indigenous languages, and when done in a group (remember #1?) it can be a lot of fun. Every language learner I know that spends a lot of time listening to and transcribing their language advances very quickly. It's hard, but that's where doing it together can make a huge difference.

BONUS 6. Make it fun

Learning an Indigenous language is hard. Especially as an adult. But hanging out with other learners and having fun will take something that you know you need to do and feels like a chore, and turn it into something that you want to keep doing over and over and over again. This is a winning recipe for language learning, "make it fun" is almost like a secret sauce that you can use to keep your motivation high and keep advancing quickly.

Those are my tips for today, I'll probably come back and revise this list at some point, but for now, as we say in nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree Y-dialect), âhkamêyimo "don't give up".