A few words about me. I was trained as a linguist in Moscow, in the late 1980-s, in a wonderful program at Moscow State University called .
One huge and amazing part of the program was , which means gathering information about a language from its native speakers, and then writing up whatever you gathered and publishing it, so everyone can learn about that language. I went on three linguistic expeditions to , a Russian republic in the Caucasus. With a bunch of eager 20-year-olds and one wonderful professor (), I traveled to three tiny villages high up in the mountains (called Itsari, Megeb, and Godoberi), camped on village school floors for weeks, and every day went to people’s houses with a notebook, trying to learn their language. Stunning ! Incredible brainy fun!
So, here is one great online resource for field language learning that I keep telling everyone about.
Greg Thompson’s . If anyone can help you learn Spanish from your Latino neighbors, Greg Thompson can! He’ll tell you how to get a Language Resource Person (LRP), that is, any native speaker willing to spend time with you, and exactly how to ferret out every bit of language that you need. A few words from Greg:
Come back to all those people who say, “I want to learn language X; where can I find a textbook?” What would be a better first question for them to ask? Try “I want to learn language X; where can I find some speakers of language X?” How rarely people ask that. How odd…