linguaholic

I think that it has been shown very clearly that sign language is not universal. Apart from this misconception, there are several other things that you often hear about sign language that are not true at all. The following graphic will bust some other myths about Sign Language:

It is really hard to tell exactly how many languages there are. But it must be between 6000 - 8000 according to trusthworthy sources. Here a list of the most spoken ones. A little bit outdated, but still gives you a good picture about the most spoken languages out there.

obviously a lot is correct. In this digital age, people just want to write things as fast and easy as possible, so they often just write alot instead of a lot...:=) still pretty funny though

Etymologically speaking, the word seems to be going back to the 17th century. Google is saying the following:

It is always handy to have some synonyms at hand when crafting new texts and content. One word that I often come across is "to realize" or "to realise (Brit. English) and as you should not always use the same verb(s) over and over, I want to give all you some synonyms: ascertain, catch on (to), find out, get on (to), hear, learn, discover, see, wise (up) Let me know if you know some different ones. And we should gather some example sentences as well. ascertain: "Since I’m not a very good liar, most people usually find it easy to ascertain when I’m being dishonest." to catch on (to): Then I caught on to what it was the man was saying. discover: I discovered that speaking English was pretty easy.

Appositive Definition Let us get in some more detail about the appositives. In general the Appositives can be defined as: two words or word groups which mean the same thing and are placed together. Appositives identify or explain the nouns or pronouns which they modify: My friend Mark, teacher at the university of Oxford, is a noble man. We can say that "teacher at the university of Oxford" in an appositive or is in apposition to "my friend Mark". "teacher at the university of Oxford" is giving us some additional info about Mark. Appositive Phrases An appositive phrase includes an appositive and its modifiers: My favorite team, the New York Knicks, are located in New York, a very nice city in the United States. Furthermore when it comes to Appositives, we need to distinguish Restrictive Appositives from Non-restrictive Appositives. A restrictive appositive is necessary to maintain the meaning of the sentence and does not require commas. Usually, a restrictive appositive is a single word closely related to the preceding word. It "restricts" or narrows the meaning of the word it modifie Let me give you some examples: The musician Jay-Z will come to Switzerland soon. Jay-Z restrics the general term "musician" My brother Daniel has 3 different cars. Daniel restricts the meaning of brother...i guess you get the idea. Nonrestrictive Appositive Apart from restrictive appositves there also exist non-restrictive appositives. The definition of non-restrictive appositives is as follows: A nonrestrictive appositive may be omitted without changing the basic meaning of the sentence. A nonrestrictive appositive is separated by commas. Commas are always used when the word which the appositive modifies is a proper noun. Let us use our previous examples and change them a little bit, so that they can illustrate non-restrictive appositives: Jay-Z, the musician, will come to Switzeralnd to perform. In this case, "the musician" is simply offering additional information abou the rapper Name Jay-Z, that could be ommitted without losing general information.

Thanks Laura for all those wonderful explanations about the definition of the appositive. I think it is pretty easy after all. If you still have problems with the appositive, you might wanna have a look at that picture here. It might help you to better grasp the idea of the appositive. It works exactly the same in German, too. ---> by the way

It is in Dative case yes, but it is a a prepositional object again. So there is a dative case within the prepositional object (as in the last example). The prepositional object being "in meinem Schlafzimmer". Prepositional objects are usually introduced by a preposition. Here it is the preposition "in". In the other example (Ich habe an meinem Geburtstag gearbeitet), the preposition that introduced the prepositional object was "an". The dative object within the prepositional object is just being "meinem Schlafzimmer".

Welcome, dear! Please have a look here to find some useful language learning resources for your Chinese Studies:

Not exactly. In fact you still have to ask "wem". The question is simply: "An wem/was habe ich gearbeitet? ---> An meinem Geburtstag. Since you can only ask this question by using a preposition in front of "meinem Geburtstag" (the preposition "an"), it is a Prepositional Object. There again, though, the Case is Dative, meaning that the prepositional object is in dative case. (a prepositional object can be either dative or accusative case).

Thanks for sharing. I will have a look at it later. regards L

I think it is easier to stick to questions when it comes to Dativ and Akkusativ in German. So just ask yourself : Is it "WEN oder WAS miete ich?" or is it "WEM miete ich"? It is very obviously "WEN oder WAS miete ich" in this question, therefore it must be accusative. Accusative ----- Question you need to ask: "Wen oder was" (who/what) Dative --------- Question you need to ask " Wem" (whom) So whenever you have a sentence, try to formulate those questions in your head and in most cases it will be pretty easy for you to pick the right answer. So lets illustrate this with one more example: "Das Haus gehört mir" So if you wanna know in which case the "mir" stands, then simply ask the questions that I just gave you. Wen oder was gehört das Haus? (indicator question for accusative case) Wem gehört das Haus? (indicator question for dative case) The first question can obviously not be formulated, therefore question 2 is the right one. And it is therefore in Dative case.

Had a quick look at it. Looks pretty interesting. Is it in BETA now?

I think you might got things twisted. In German, (as well as in other languages!!) the accusative case corresponds to DIRECT OBJECTS and dative corresponds to INDIRECT OBJECTS. Let me provide you some examples. Hopefully this will help you to better understand German Grammar and Cases. Ich schreibe einen Brief. ----> This is a sentence that only has a direct object ("einen Brief"). The question that you have to ask to get the correct case is " WEN oder WAS schreibst du". Therefore "einen Brief" is accusative. Ich helfe Dir. ------> In this sentence, "Dir" is a indirect object , because you can ask "WHOM are you helping"---> I am helping YOU. So this is a sentence with an idirect object, without a direct object present in the sentence. There are sentences, in which you have BOTH a DIRECT and an INDIRECT object. For instance: Ich gebe Dir einen Brief. ---> Here you have first the indirect object "Dir" and then you got the direct object "einen Brief". In sentences where you have an indirect and a direct object, the indirect object is usually placed before the direct object.

Hi there I can help you with that. Please provide the original sentence in English first, though. I will help you to properly translate it into German and then give you an explanation about the (Dative) case. regards Lingua

I am sure that B is correct. "Effect" is a noun. At this place in the phrase there must be a verb. That is one reason why B is wrong for sure. I am no native speaker though :=)

Those kind of questions are always so hard to answer. But as Wanda already pointed out, Russian is really not supposed to be easy. Well, it always depends on what kind of language you do speak in the first place, but I suppose your native tongue is English, I do not think that Russian can be considered to be an easy language coming from English. I studied Linguistics for many years and I have some friends that speak up to 10 languages, and usually they would put the difficulty level of Russian higher than Chinese. I have been studying Chinese at University and I am fairly fluent in it, but it took me many years. I am living in China now and that helps a lot. Still, coming from German Or English, I woudl definitely regard Chinese as a very difficult language to learn. Especially speaking and listening. The Grammar, on the other hand, is pretty basic. Just some thoughts after all...If you have any questions about studying Chinese, please let me know. regards Lingua

Welcome to Linguaholic On the top right corner you got a follow button. Click it and choose your prefered option. If you need any more help, just let me know. kind regards Lingua

Very interesting question, indeed. Well, your friends were not wrong, really. In German, the different sounds of the letter R are indeed not coming with a difference in meaning. The difference utterances of R though, that are not carrying a difference in meaning in German may carry a difference in meaning in other languages, though. It is important to be aware of the fact that the letters of an alphabet are only an approximation to the actual 'sounds'. To be more precise, the sounds that people produce for the letter R (for instance in Germans) can correspond to different phonemes, however those phonemes are not carrying a different meaning in German. To 'find out' the phonemes of a language, one has to establish so called minimal pairs ('words' that are only different in one phoneme like 'pat' and 'bat') and check whether a change in meaning takes place or not. I was trying to put this as simple as possible. After all, the explanations are very vague. If you are really interested in this, I can suggest you some really good books on the topic. Within linguistics, we are talking here about the field of phonetics and phonology. Please keep in mind that when you are observing phenomenons like this, it is very important not to give too much attention to the alphabet alone. As you are interested about the production and accurate visualization and classification of the sounds, you need to take into account the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet

Hey there Thank you for that lovely introduction. So happy to see a another linguaholic on my plattform! Best Lingua

I did the first text for you. Hope you can still use it. regards L

are you still in need of help for this?