linguaholic

Tattoos with Chinese Characters are widely popular in Europe ( I guess almost everywhere in the World); The problem is just that most people do not have a clue about Chinese at all. Still, they love how the characters look like and that seems to be reason enough to get one :=) Sometimes, however, this can go terribly wrong. Find out more about it, by accessing the following link: http://hanzismatter.blogspot.ch/

Hi Mores Welcome to the "linguaholic family" :wacky: !! I am glad to hear you are excited about your trip to the UK! Hope you will spend a nice semester there! If you need any help in Japanese, you might wanna post your question here on linguaholic.com :grin: regards

认识你我很高兴！我在苏黎世读书！我希望我们可以交朋友！ 我的Skype是 djeasily. 如果你没有Skype 的花，我也有weixin. best wishes 马赛尔

As I am a visual learner, I preferr to study alone. I tried to study in groups, however this did not work out well for me as group study is usually based on "oral communication". I generally really need to write stuff down... nobody can really help me with that I guess:)

Dear Trellum There is already a hige thread aout the pimsleur method. you should be able to find plenty of answers there: http://linguaholic.com/general-discussion/the-pimsleur-method-what-do-you-think-about-it/ regards Linguaholic

The problem with Harry Potter books is that there are so many "inventend words" in it. J.K Rowling "made up" a lot of different words to create Hogwarts and the world around it and this makes it rather difficult to understand the books in a foreign language, as you may not be able to grasp the meaning of those "fictional words and expressions", at least that is what I was struggling with most when starting to read the Harry Potter Series in Chinese. :grin: How do you call this kind of words in English by the way? I know that there is no such thing as "fictional words", however you might know what I mean and I would be glad if you could provide the exact term(s) for it. thank you :wacky:

J'habite à Bienne, la plus grande ville bilingue (allemand est français) de Suisse et capitale mondiale de l'horlogerie. En fait, Rolex, la plus grande marque horlogère mondiale, manufacture les mouvements de ses montres à Bienne, alors que le Swatch Group, le plus grand groupe horloger mondial, a son siège principal à Bienne et investit dans trois bâtiments ultramodernes pour Omega et Swatch. C'est assez impressionnante, parce que Bienne est vraiment une ville tout petite! Je suis de langue maternelle allemand, mais comme j'habite à Bienne, je peux régulièrement parler le français! De plus, j'a fait la maturité professionnelle à Neuchâtel (une autre ville tout petite dans la romandie).

Oh yes, you are right! The abuse of "like" is also something I really can't stand. I am glad you mentioned it and I am also glad you wrote "irritates me to boiling point". I really like this idiomatic expression:=) I would like to add the expression "you guys". Some people just use this all the time: "What are you guys doing tonight?" "You guys are just so..." and so on. I just really cant stand it. Moreover, I do not understand why people would use this for a mixed group of boys and girls as well? A guy, at least for me, is male and never female. It just sounds so weird to me if somebody it talking about guys including girls as well. Hmm, maybe that is just me because, after all, I am not a native speaker of English

There is already a thread up which is called: "funny language situations". I would like to expand upon this by asking all of you: what was your most embarrassing "language situation". I am willing to share my "best story". When I was in China a few years ago, my Chinese was still terrible, so I did not now how I could order 2 bottles of water (in a very small street corner shop). Therefore I just showed them two fingers to make them understand that I will need two bottles. However, when the waiter（服务员）came back, she prepared eight bottles for me :grin: Why did this happen? Have a look at the picture below and you might understand why this happened :=) The pictures are showing the numbers in sequence, so the first one (left) is 1, the next one in the middle 2 and the one to the right is 3, and so on.....you should have a look at the one for 2 and 8 (二 and 八). What you will also notice by looking at this picture is that counting from 1 to 10 is really easy in Chinese (talking about the characters!!!)

谢谢你 zlqwerty1! 你也可以介绍一下你自己吗？我很好奇你到底是谁啊 ：＝）

"You are good from far but far from good" :grin:

I am not sure to be honest... I can not figure out what the 采 stands for in the last part. Usually it means "to pick, gather, collect". The last sentence 这个职业并不陌生，它与中国的采极其相似, might mean something like: According to Chinese, the profession "clothes designer" is not something that they are unfamiliar with, on the contrary, it resembles to a high degree to the name that Chinese people give to this kind of profession in China. The English Translation is horrible, but I hope you will understand what I mean here :=) I might think about a better translation in the meantime :=)

Es freut mich sehr zu hören, dass es Dir hier gefällt. Wie lange lernst du denn schon Deutsch? Beste Grüsse Marcel

I must admit that I did not read that many English Books yet. However, at university, I have to read tons of text material that it solely available in English. I did read the Harry Potter books in English though, as well as in German and some parts also in Chinese :=)) Moreover, I have been reading some stuff in English that originally was written in Japanese. For example, some books from Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the shore and 19Q4. My japanese is just not good enough to be able to read it in Japanese:=). All those book and texts that I mentioned above helped me in one way or another to improve "my command of English"

J'ai corrigé quelques erreurs. J'espère que ça ne te dérange pas! Salutations Marcel

大家好 我是马赛尔。我是个二十八岁的瑞士人。我现在在苏黎世大学读书。我的专业是汉语学，还有 Computational Linguistics。中文怎么说？不好意思，我也不知道。 我刚参加了那个汉语水平考试 (五级)。阅读的一部分还可以了，但是听力太难了。我每天在家里努力的学习，但是那个听力的一部分让我发疯了 ＝） 最近说汉语的机会差不多没有了，怪不得我的汉语水平越来越底。。。真可惜！

Maybe wowgtp , but who knows hehe :=) Anyway, there is always someone who knows more than you do. ALWAYS. Most probably in year or two you will see a 15 year old hyper-polyglot that already speaks 25 languages :grin: However, this video is definitely inspiring and I have to admit, this guy ROCKS!

Not necessarily BWL. In Zurich, people would say Hund (almost like in German), so they do not pronounce it as we do in Bern ("ä hung"). Some people in Switzerland would also say "en hond". There might be different versions that I am not even aware of:=)

Je vous prie de vous présenter en Français ici. Je sais bien que presque tout le monde c'est déjà présenté en anglais, mais si vous aimeriez bien étudier le Français (c'est à dire améliore vos connaissances), ça serais une bonne idée de le faire encore une fois ici. Merci bien!

So, das neue "Subforum" ist jetzt online. Jetzt müssen wir das Forum nur noch mit guten Inhalten füllen. Ich richte mich hier natürlich primär an alle "Deutschlernenden". Schreibt doch einen kleinen Text hier ins Forum und dann können wir uns gegenseitig helfen und Texte korrigieren, über mögliche Satzstrukturen philosophieren und unsere Sprachkenntnisse der deutschen Sprache verbessern! An alle Muttersprachler: Schaut doch ab und zu mal hier im Forum vorbei und helft unseren "Deutsch-Schülern" weiter, sofern es irgendwelche Probleme geben sollte :=) Verbesserungsvorschläge sind erwünscht (egal ob zur Grammatik, Stil oder Wortwahl, etc). Vielen Dank! Und los geht's !

That's a funny game :grin: I played it once and got stuck at 550 points ;(

wow, incredible! That guy just really inspired me! Will need to study a new language soon as well hehe. :grin:

The subforums are now up and running. I had an important exam today, so I am a little bit late. Sorry about that!

there are quite a lot of Indian people here, therefore I might add Hindi as well!! :angel:

I guess you are talking about the Pimsleur Method (Pimsleur approach)?