2009 has been intense for us here at JANERA. We talked to established world leaders, provocative thinkers, and bold innovators, all of whom are tackling the biggest issues of our time. See below an overview of our 2009 events, and read what’s next on our agenda for 2010.
Global Religion in February with leading Buddhist thinker Sharon Salzburg and five other leading religious figures;
Modern-day Slavery in March with Peter Buffett and Dayton Literary Peace Prize winning author Benjamin Skinner;
Global Capitalism in March with ProfessorJeffrey Sachs and the New York Bureau Chief of The Economist Matthew Bishop;
Green Transportation in May with Robin Chase one of Time Magazine‘s most influential people in 2009 and Vijay Vaitheeswaran award-winning correspondent for The Economist;
Iranian Elections in June with journalist and author Hooman Madj and Nisid Hajari, Newsweek’s Foreign Editor;
Empowering Women & Girls in September with Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Sheryl WuDunn and Camfed’s Executive Director, Ann Cotton.
Climate Change Debate in November with NRDC’s Ralph Cavanagh, Duke University’s Eric Roston, AEI’s Steven Hawyard, Reason Magazine’s Ronald Bailey, moderated by CNBC’s Dennis Kneale;
We undertook a complete redesign of our Web site and switched from being “the voice of global nomads” to “curating global conversations.” We now integrate video into the site more and think this better reflects our mission of making international affairs accessible and attractive.
And we launched a brand-new membership program with exciting benefits! We not only serve individuals with discounts to our events at our Nomad level, but we can also help causes spread the word at the GameChanger level, or even co-host events with authors, advocates and concerned citizens at the Leaders level. And this is just the beginning. Click on our Membership page and find out which level fits you best, and sign up today!
2010 promises to be amazing. We are taking the conversation to the next level by partnering with fabulous companies and individuals, and are expanding beyond New York. If you’re interested in bringing our events to your city, email us to set it up.
THANK YOU for being with us along this roller-coaster ride and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
In the midst, or perhaps just the beginning, of what is being described by members of congress as an “economic hurricane”, a large group of self-described ‘global nomads’ made their way to the shelter of low lighting and good drinks in New York’s Norwood Club on Tuesday night. The purpose of the gathering, organized jointly by JANERA.com and Tablet Hotels, was not to forget our problems but to stare them straight in the face. Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia’s Earth Institute and venerable economist would sit down with Matthew Bishop, the Economist’s New York bureau chief and lead a public discussion about where we are going and what lies ahead.
As guests mingled around the bar, where the economic hurricane had not yet hit drink prices and a large beverage known as Old Pal was going for 28 dollars, the evening’s speakers arrived and immediately began fielding questions. “How long do you think this economic climate will last?” one guest asked Sachs. “What worries you most about what lies ahead?” another leaned in to ask.
“These are all things I hope we’ll get into this evening,” Sachs responded, and then glanced around anxiously. “Where are we?” he suddenly asked. A few patrons looked at each other. Was it possible the great development aid thinker was having a delicate moment? “Uh, New York?” one guest ventured. “Oh, no, I mean this venue,” Sachs continued. “What is this place?”
Relief spread across the faces of his gathered audience. “Oh, this is the Norwood Club,” one guest responded. “It’s a private club in New York.” Sachs nodded his head and glanced toward the bar at the center of the living room in what is a converted townhouse. “I see. Well, this sounded like fun so I thought I’d come try it. I don’t do that many of these engagements.” Then he moved up to the front of the room, a sheaf of documents in his hands, and took his seat alongside Bishop.
Following a quick introduction by Janera Soerel, founder of JANERA.com, the two speakers launched into their opening remarks, seeking to underscore just how large the global economic collapse was and would continue to be. “This is an extraordinarily big moment,” started Bishop. “No one can believe what’s happened. It’s a paradigm shift moment. We’re going to look back on 2008 as the year everything changed.”
Sachs followed Bishop’s head-shaking comments with more specifics. “Huge imbalances in the world economy, coupled with ecological stresses on the planet and our own ongoing effort to not blow ourselves up in all-out war are the largest issues we face on the planet.” Sachs, raising his hands in the air, voiced his support for Obama and his new administration but warned he “could get stuck” and stated his concern that the world’s poor were not sufficiently “on the radar.”
From 2003 to 2008, worldwide stock market values increased by thirty trillion dollars, with a ten trillion dollar increase in the US alone. But this unprecedented market growth has been met in the past six months with unprecedented decline, where thirty trillion dollars have been lost, ten trillion of those in the housing market.
“These facts alone would cause us all to feel a little shitty,” Sachs joked.
While the two speakers differed over the role governments can play in redressing the situation, with Bishop urging a stronger private sector role against Sach’s call for more responsibility and control, at least in the short term, from the government, both seemed to agree that the situation would get a lot worse before it got better.
“Consumption is going to be low and subdued for many years to come,” Bishop surmised, while Sachs pointed out that trillions of dollars in government spending and bailout money could be allocated in poverty alleviation initiatives and programs for social change. “In all the presidential and vice presidential debates, the words ‘poverty’ and ‘poor’ were not used once. The words ‘middle class’ were used,” Sachs said. “This is a shocking sign that our politics has stopped being about real people.” As they sat at the front of the room, beginning to take questions from the audience, both men seemed floored by the scope and scale of what they were discussing.
“I’m not sure I have a deep theory of how things got so awry,” Sachs conceded. Yet, as the night continued, audience members pushed the two for a deeper theory and the focus of discussion bounced from a better way to measure social wellbeing (“we need a more sophisticated measure”) to philanthropy (“Rockefeller was the greatest philanthropist in history, perhaps Bill Gates can match him,”) to what we should do about the automobile industry, (“the move to create hybrid and electric cars is exactly the direction we need to be going in.”)
The consensus that the conditions the world is now facing are “extremely difficult” and will “likely get more, not less, complicated” were not in dispute, but clear and specific steps forward were in short supply.
“I cycled through a range of emotions in listening to this discussion tonight,” commented Michela O’Connor Abrams, publisher of the design and home furnishing magazine Dwell who had come to hear the two speak. “I went from being depressed to angry to hopeful to depressed again.”
As Matthew Bishop chatted with guests eager to compare notes about their own survival strategies, a documentary filmmaker approached the departing Jeffery Sachs. “I’d like to come up to Columbia and meet with you about some ideas and ask you a few more questions,” the filmmaker said. Sachs, still clutching his sheaf of papers, laughed.
“Sure we can talk more,” he said. “I don’t know that I have all the answers, but we can certainly talk about the questions.”
Almost all the adults I know think that learning a foreign language in adulthood is impossible. “I’m terrible with languages,” they say.
Linguists agree, at least in part. Steven Pinker, for one, thinks the “language instinct” is lost somewhere around puberty. Children are linguistic geniuses, adults linguistic dolts. Pinker points out that Walter Kissinger (Henry’s younger brother) has no German accent, though sixty years after his emigration, Henry famously does. They came to the United States at the same time, in the crucial years around puberty. Walter’s advantage, Pinker surmises, was being a few years younger than his brother when they moved. This allowed him to absorb more English and kick his accent. (According to Pinker, the accent is as much a part of the language instinct as is grammar.)
Learning a language in adulthood is difficult—nothing can replace the childhood environment, much less the childhood brain. However, with patience and persistence, it can be done. To produce a foreign language requires more than lips, teeth and tongue—it requires ears, eyes and mental agility. You must listen carefully and then imitate.
Language is like jazz: both are spontaneous compositions derived from a finite set of elements (notes or words). But the jazz analogy may compel people to think that they simply don’t have the talent. What they don’t realize is how obsessively John Coltrane practiced, repeating scales and arpeggios over and over again to build up the skills he would need to make that freeform composition on the stage seem so effortless.
It is exactly the same way when composing a foreign language.
I’ve learned Spanish, German, French, Portuguese and Russian—all post-puberty. And recently, I started Arabic—by far the hardest language I’ve studied. Though I was frustrated at first, now that I have a better teacher and a good textbook, I’m making rapid progress. Every student of language is different, but here are some strategies that have helped me:
Slow and steady. Regular practice is by far the most important element in learning a language. Students often try to cram as much into their heads as fast as they can which leads to frustration and fatigue. If taking a class, they are exposed to the language only one to three times a week, plus the time they spend on homework.
It is far more helpful to spend five minutes twice a day, every day, thinking, reading and talking in the language. Where and when, though? As you learn, practice out loud whenever you are alone. While you walk to the train station, or sit in stop-and-go traffic, review to yourself. Start simple: “I go to work. I am in the car. I live in New York.” Repeat these basics over and over, and then vary the subject. “Steve goes to work. Steve is in his car. Steve lives in New York.” Repeat, repeat, repeat. You will then feel a thrill as you proceed to compound sentences, tenses, and modal verbs (should, would, must, may). “I am going to work, because I have to. I live in New York, and I love it here.” Those steps beyond baby talk are exciting.
Take a class. If you live in any medium-sized city, a foreign-language class is not hard to find. If you are in a big city, you will be spoiled for choice. New York University, for example, offers dozens of classes in a wide variety of languages from Norwegian to Yiddish to Persian, for around $450 a semester. Attending a class is the single best way to motivate yourself—the desire to impress a teacher and classmates will help keep you on task. If you have the means to get a private tutor, even better. But be sure to get a recommendation from a knowledgeable friend—not every native speaker is a good teacher.
Teach yourself. Learning a foreign language all by yourself is extremely difficult—and probably not a good idea if it’s your first one. However, if you decide to go the autodidact route, make sure to buy top-notch books, audio CDs, and computer programs.
A good book can get you far in a language with an easy spelling system, like Spanish or Italian. I’ve found Routledge’s “Colloquial” series to be fairly good. But for languages with irregular spelling (French or Danish, say), or unfamiliar sounds (Chinese or Hindi), it’s better to get a book that comes with audio CDs. The “Ultimate” series from Random House has a straightforward, building-block structure, with practical vocabulary and lucid explanations.
Computer software has something to offer as well. But don’t expect miraculous results. I reviewed the Danish version of the widely marketed Rosetta Stone series here. Short version: you will learn grammar and vocabulary surprisingly quickly with this novel (and expensive) software, but you won’t learn practical stuff at all. While focusing on grammar building blocks, the program sacrifices basic elements of conversation such as “hello” or “my name is” or “help!” Though you’ll be able to say, “There is not an elephant under the airplane,” I’m not sure you’ll ever have a reason to use this sentence in daily conversation.
Rosetta Stone has another drawback. Each lesson is structured exactly the same—identical exercises in the same order. This is bad practice—different languages pose different challenges. Also, many languages have structures Rosetta Stone isn’t equipped to teach: the Arabic dual number (words have singular, dual and plural endings), the Russian verbal aspect system, the Spanish subjunctive and so forth are all distinctive. Rosetta’s software does not address any of these eccentricities.
Surround yourself. Whenever possible, bring the language into your immediate world. The “10 Minutes a Day” series of books is generally useless, as if written for not particularly bright six-year-olds, but they do come with small stickers you can attach to items all around your house. This is an excellent vocabulary-building technique. If every time you reach for your coffee mug you see chashka (Russian for cup) and you say the word to yourself, it will stick in your head.
Nearly every language in the world can be found on the Internet. The BBC, in fact, broadcasts everything from Spanish to Bengali. (You can check out their 33-language menu here).
As you potter around the house, listen to the day’s news in your language of choice. You don’t need to understand everything, but this will both help you feel the rhythm and become accustomed to the accent. You’ll get a crucial psychological boost when you can make out a few words, then phrases and sentences, in a row. Do this every few days and you’ll be surprised by your progress.
Read. BBC.com also has written material that you can practice with. The news stories in each of those 33 languages are written in a clear, simple style for a worldwide audience. When you’re ready, try to read a news story a week, especially about something you’re familiar with. This is crucial—reading an article about unfamiliar material is distressingly complex. But if you know the subject, it can be pleasantly easy, since you’ll be able to guess many unfamiliar words. You’ll need to start out with a dictionary, but once you learn frequently-used words, you’ll be able to go without it and guess most of the things you don’t know.
You can also read books that have been translated from English into your chosen language—all the better if it’s a book you know. I have a copy of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity in German, for example. Hornby’s clear English is translated into similarly clear German, without some of the convoluted sentence structures many native Germans use. I know the original book and movie, so I myself can zip through it.
When you are ready to move to the next level and read unfamiliar books in this language, ask a native which authors write in an easy, clear style. If you were helping a foreigner try to learn English, for example, you would suggest Hemingway, not David Foster Wallace. Similarly, someone learning German would do well to start with Kafka rather than Thomas Mann.
Find a friend who speaks the language. This is obvious, but practice with a native speaker is enormously helpful. If you’re lucky enough to have a good friend who is a native speaker—or best of all, a girlfriend/boyfriend or housemate (someone you see all the time)—take advantage of him or her. Don’t wait until you feel totally comfortable, or you’ll never start. Make it fun, make it a routine, and do so early.
Relax. The biggest hurdle to learning a language is psychological. If you’re nervous about blundering through a new language in front of strangers, the best way to relax is to start slowly. At a local coffee shop staffed exclusively by young Polish blondes, I take my muffin and coffee away with a “dziekuje.” (Thank-you.) My pronunciation isn’t perfect, but it never fails to win a slightly surprised smile. Next step? I’ll order the coffee in Polish, too. Then, I’ll try “goodbye.”
When you’re ready and have the chance, smile and try speaking with your teacher in the corridor, your cute Russian co-worker, the man who sells you cigarettes, or the waiter at your favorite restaurant. See that grin? Most people love to see you make the effort, and they will be happy to see you break out new vocabulary and longer sentences.
If you kick yourself for every little slip-up (and you’ll make many), you’ll never progress. If you relax, simply communicate, and most of all enjoy, you can, with patience and effort, learn any language you want.
Lane Greene is an international correspondent for The Economist: he writes on American foreign policy and international politics for www.economist.com.
