Yesterday I met with a friend. We had planned to do a recorded language session, but I felt the pressure from being on camera again. I could identify a couple of reasons for the feeling, but on the bright side, this realisation came to me. Language is embodied (or naturally acquired, if you prefer) in the present, living moment, and nothing else. An interesting happening, an exciting adventure, a task performed in cooperation with others, joyful child's play, or just watching a film or TV show—they're all opportunities to let language enter your being and become embodied (if you let it, that is). While off-camera, there were plenty of small things happening around us (a spider on my arm, a piece of rubbish on a bench...) that quickly became points of interest to talk about, and this I did. When I after the fact realised it could all have been recorded, it felt like the moment was already gone; it didn't feel right to try to recreate a naturally occurring occurrence. The thought of recording this present moment is part of what puts pressure on me, since it feels like I myself won't be able to be fully present, but that I have to perform. But what would have happened if the camera was just rolling, even with nothing particular prepared, and it just happened to have caught that spider on my arm? Then you all would have been able to take part of that present moment a little later, and that would have contributed to your development of embodied Swedish. So maybe I can just be ready with the camera at any given moment—who knows what comes my way?

Finally got around to hosting a meetup! It's been a while since I did this and felt a bit rusty, but we had fun. This is a good example of what ALG-style sessions can look like: unscripted, chaotic, often unplanned, and rapid changes between topics. And as long as we're having fun and what is happening can be understood, these are all ingredients of natural language acquisition—or embodying language, as I call it. Huge thanks to Poorya and Sofia for joining me today!

Over the past few weeks, I've learnt that it's been a big step starting up this Skool page. Maybe a bigger step than I would've taken if I was aware of what I was doing. I've tried to film my first introductory course lately—nothing big, just a way to give the bigger picture of my goal with this community—and noticed that I'm stuck in loops of performance anxiety. I didn't feel like my natural self on camera. Luckily, I realised that this is very closely related to natural acquisition (NA) of languages. It's all about slowly, steadily being exposed to [thing] and embodying the experience of it, until you can flow naturally in [thing]. This isn't the first instance of something I've used language acquisition as a parallel to, languages are basically connected to everything. With all this said, I will take some time to get accustomed to being on camera until it feels natural, before content starts appearing on here. I thank you for your patience, and clarify that the community is still very much open!

Happy to see a handful of members here! It's taking me some time, but I'm working on my first bit of content right now, hoping to have it up before the end of the week 😊 Now, I'm curious about you, the one reading this! What's your own relationship with languages and language learning? What languages do you speak, and what are your experiences with learning them?

Hi! Feeling a mix of excitement and nervousness about starting this thing 😊 If you're into languages and language learning, if you'd like to learn languages but feel it's too difficult, and/or if you have a penchant for questioning our material reality and established assumptions, I welcome you! Language Embodied is the start of my journey to bring awareness to the world about what languages really are, what we really have them for, the significance they will play in the bringing together of humanity, and what we can learn about ourselves as a species through languages. The theoretical and inspirational starting point in my work here is first and foremost the distinction between language *learning* and language *acquisition* coined by the linguist Dr Stephen Krashen, which was in turn tested to its extreme by fellow linguist Dr J Marvin Brown through his Automatic Language Growth (ALG) method. The implications of this method and the observations that led Brown to develop it will play a central role in what we do here. To give you a basic idea, I'll leave an excellent introductory video to you. If you're especially initrigued, I warmly recommend Brown's autobiography, also posted below 👇 And to implement all the theoretical stuff in practice, you'll also have the opportunity to naturally acquire Swedish, my first language, here on this community, through regular sessions of ALG-type Swedish "classes"; you'll learn why I use quotation marks there. Stick around and we'll have some fun! 😁 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW8M4Js4UBA https://bradonomics.com/brown-autobiography/