linguaholic

Hey Martee It's always nice to see new linguaholics on board. I hope you will enjoy yourself in the forums!

We have already seen a really nice collection of beautiful french words. Now I would like to add some easy phrases and french words for travelers: May I help you ? Est-ce-que je peux vous aider? Do you speak English? Parlez vous l'anglais? How old are you? Vous avez quel âge? I'm lost? Je suis perdu. Could you please speak a little bit slower? Pouvez-vous parler un petit peu plus lentement, s'il vous plâit? Where are the toilets? Où sont les toilettes? I (really) don't know. Je ne sais pas.(J'ai aucune idée). Please add some more useful french words and phrases for travelers (beginners).

That is exactly what we have in mind, bradman1313. We might come up with some different things as well. Stay tuned :grin:

Those two Kanjis are really interesting. I have not seen those in use in Chinese actually. I'm gonna consult a dictionary and find out if those characters are used at all in Chinese.

Thank you for providing this. I just took the time to fill in all the necessary details and took the test. I am a native speaker of German and I ended up listening a text in Dutch. I was able to understand some of it and to correctly answer the "final" question". Was a little bit lucky though. Anyway, it has been good fun to participate in this little "survey". How did you do? I'm curious to hear more about your experience with that "test".

In the past we had fish/fishing idioms, insect idioms and some more. What about heart-related idioms/metaphors? Let us collect them in this thread. break (someone`s) heart do (something) in a heartbeat from the bottom of one’s Heart with half a heart follow one's heart have a heart have a change of heart have a soft spot in one's heart for (someone or something) heart is in the right place to have a heart of stone pour one’s heart out to someone to have a heavy heart learn (something) by heart lose one’s heart to (someone) to be young at heart

Chinese Character Class: Pictographic Characters Contrary to popular belief, most of the Chinese Characters are NOT pictographic. Still, some widely used and important characters belong to the character class: 象形, in English: Form imitation -->Pictographic Characters. Today I would like to introduce a few of them: The first one being 马， which means horse. It is written mǎ in Pinyin and the traditional character for it is 馬 (in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the traditional script is still in use). In Mainland China, the vast majority is using simplified Characters. The following picture reveals how this character evolved over time. From left to write, you see the character as written in : Oracle Bone Script, Seal Script, Clerical Script, Semi-Cursive Script, Cursive Script, Regular Script (Traditional) and Regular Script (Simplified).

For instance, the character 马 (simplified Chinese) is a pictographic character. In traditional script, the character is 馬。The picture shows how the character evolved over time. From left to right, it shows the character in Oracle Bone Script, then in Seal Script, after that in Clerical Script, followed by Cursive Script and then in traditional script and finally in simplified script

Are you looking for good online resources to study Japanese? Then, look no further. http://www.saiga-jp.com/japanese_language.html (Introduction of the Japanese language & Characters (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji) http://nihongo.j-talk.com/ (Kanji Converter -->to Romaji, Hiragana and English) http://www.kanachart.com/ (Hiragana, Katakana & Kanji for Beginners) http://www.coscom.co.jp/hiragana-katakana/ www.kudan-japanese-school.com (Japanese Language School in Tokyo) http://japanese.reader.bz/ (Japanese Name Translator Tool) http://kanji.koohii.com/ (Amazing Page to learn Kanji online -->Based on Remembering the Kanji method of J.W.Heisig) http://www.tanoshiijapanese.com/home/ http://www.japones.info/gunkan/gunkan55/html/gunkan_base/base_gunkan.html http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/ts/japanese/ http://app.kanjialive.com/ (A free Study Tool for reading and writing Kanji) http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/ (popup Japanese-English/German/French/Russian dictionary tool for Firefox, Thunderbird and Seamonkey) http://www.jisho.org (Online Japanese Dictionary) http://www.jgram.org/ (Japanese Grammar Database) http://www.guidetojapanese.org (Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese) http://www.easyjapanese.org/ (Learn Japanese with Flash Quizzes) http://japanese.about.com/ (Introduction to the Japanese language by the About series...) http://www.tofugu.com/ (Stylish Blog about the Japanese language! Very cool indeed) http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/ (Interesting blog by the famous Japanese Learner 'Khazumoto'. Highly recommended) http://life.ou.edu/stories/ (really good resources for studying Hiragana)

That is actually not the case. Just a rather small percentage of all chinese characters are of pictographic origin. Most of the characters are phono-semantical characters (one phonetic constituent and one semantic constituent). It's pretty complex, but basically there are six different character classes in Chinese. I'm going to elaborate more on this in a new thread soon.

Madame Bovary by Flaubert is definitely a classic. Here in Switzerland, almost everybody reads this at school.

Another Kanji that I really like is 難。It means difficult or difficulty. In Chinese, it is pronounced nan (second tone) and has the same meaning. The simplified version (now used in mainland china) is 难。

Please note that this question has already been treated here : http://linguaholic.com/general-discussion/the-world's-most-difficult-language-your-opinion/ Please consult this thread and give us your vote!

I just added a poll regarding the question: "Which Language Would You Consider Easiest To Learn?" Please vote! You will find the poll on top of this thread.

I added a poll regarding the question: "What is the most difficult language?" You will find the poll on top of this thread. Please vote!

I added a poll regarding the question: "What is the hardest part about learning Spanish?" Please vote! You find the poll on top of this thread.

Some more insect idioms "to have a bee in one`s bonnet" Meaning: to have a fixed idea about something that stays in one's mind "a hive of activity" Meaning: a place with a lot of activity "put a bug in (someone`s) ear (about something)" Meaning: to give someone a hint or an idea about something / someone

oh, I didn't know that you use this one in English as well. We have it in German too: "Den Nagel auf den Kopf treffen"It's a pretty common one in German.

oh, ok I got it now. Thanks a lot! :grin:

Selfie? It's a little bit embarassing but I don't know what this means exactly. Could you explain please? Thank you!

That's true....we will focus more on twitter soon though.

We are on Twitter now as well. :karate: https://twitter.com/linguaholix Would be well appreciated if you could follow us :grin:

Hi Nriz There is already a massive thread about the Pimsleur Method here: http://linguaholic.com/general-discussion/the-pimsleur-method-what-do-you-think-about-it/ Please use the search function before posting new threads. Thank you for your understanding :wacky:

Thank you for sharing this page polaroidsredwine. I had a quick glance at it and I have to admit that this is a beautiful website. As you mentioned, the vocabulary explained and displayed is rather easy, but the whole concept is really worthwile and the design is excellent. I can see how those images could help you to remember the meaning of a certain character. It is most helpful for pictographic characters like 山 or 虎. It might be a little be more problematic for complex characters (for several reasons).

Thank you for the helpful advice jcannon! Yes, we are on twitter as well. On top of the page on the left side you should see the little twitter symbol. if you click on it, you will get to the linguaholic twitter site. :grin: