BWL

I totally agree that not every student is the same. I've had students who had to write down new words all the time in order to visualise them and I've also had some who needed to constantly repeat newly-learned vocabulary in order to memorise them.

http://www.thepolyglotdream.com/about/ The link above is for a blog by Luca, an Italian language fanatic. He shares various language-learning techniques including how to (here we go!) remember vocabulary : http://www.thepolyglotdream.com/forget-it-the-secret-of-remembering-words/ Take a look. His techniques may not work for everybody but they are based on years of experience.

That's very nice of you! I'm far from 100% fluent but I would definitely like to practise! Maybe we could suggest to linguaholic to eventually start a Hindi language sub-forum I did not know that about Hindi in Delhi but thanks for letting me know! i won't be confused when I go to Delhi and people talked to me like that! I grew up in Malaysia where Indian languages are commonly spoken as well. Most of the Indians in Malaysia are either southerners from Tamil Nadu or else Panjabis from further north but Hindi music and films are very popular everywhere. My family is of Chinese origin so that's why I speak Chinese as well and English is used a lot just like in India. I picked up other languages at university, work and from my travels.

I totally agree. It is sometimes difficult to get the proper nuances when translating from language to another. In a cultures as vastly different as American and Japanese, the cultural differences can often impede proper translations of even common phrases. For example, how would you translate "O-negai shimasu", when it is said by a radio DJ who just started work and is introducing herself and speaking to her new colleagues who work at the radio station?

It is definitely Hindi. It means "And tell (me), what are you doing?" It is a question rather than a statement. Also, the grammar is slightly wrong. "Aap", meaning "You" is never used with "batao" and "kar rahe ho". It should be "Aur bataye aap kya kar rahe hain?" if you were speaking with someone older and more respected or with a stranger (like saying "vous" in French, "Usted" in Spanish and "Sie" in German). It should be "Aur batao aap kya kar rahe ho?" if you were speaking with someone younger or someone whom you are close friends with. (like saying "tu" in French and Spanish and "du" in German) I believe this may be copied from the lyrics of a song, although I might be mistaken. I hope this helps!

I've never personally encountered the "tried - tired" mistake in Malaysia, probably because Malaysian English is based on British English rather than American, so we do not pronounce the "R" in "tired". "Tired" and "tried" sound totally different. On the other hand Chinese learners today usually learn American English and the "R" sound is very prominently pronounced in both words which makes them sound similar. In Mandarin Chinese, "R" appears at the beginning and at the end of words but never in a consonant cluster meant "tr" and "pr" and "cr" combinations do not exist in Chinese, so it is very difficult for Chinese speakers to pronounce "tried" but it is easier for them to pronounce "tired" so it may just be that they mentally map "tried" and "tired" together.

Actually, there is no universally accepted criterion to distinguish a language from a dialect. Languages are generally known as dialects if : They have no standard or codified form They are not written They lack prestige when compared to the accepted standard language Now, in this respect, we can classify the various Chinese languages as dialects because they share a common written standard, they are not as prestigious as Mandarin and all Chinese speakers identify culturally and historically as Chinese. Linguistically speaking, however the grammatical and phonological differences between Mandarin and Cantonese are greater than the differences between English and German. While the difference between Beijing Mandarin and Sichuanese Mandarin or that between Hong Kong Cantonese and Toishanese can be said to be dialectal differences; the differences between Mandarin and Cantonese and Fujianese are really great enough for linguists to classify them as different languages. They are regarded as Chinese dialects for cultural reasons rather than linguistic reasons.

I agree with Czarownica. The shapes are cute and a hilarious but really take quite a bit of effort to remember! Remembering the Kana does have some great tips and mnemonics to help learn and memorize kana.

Well, I can get by in simple Thai but I am far from fluent. :grin: I am completely illiterate except for reading some stuff on sign boards and common words! I believe there could be more members on this forum who are interested in learning Thai though.

In Malaysia, most people speak English but often mix it with Malay, Chinese and Tamil, the main languages spoken in the country. One common problem is using English words with grammar from these languages. It is very common for Malaysians to say things like "Where you go yesterday?". This is because since the word "yesterday' already shows that the event happened in the past, why is there need to use "Where DID you go yesterday?". Why waste the effort and energy by saying something twice? This use of "incorrect" grammar is very common in Malaysia. Malaysians, when speaking English often say things like "You eat already?" rather than "Have you eaten already?". Since the word "already" shows that the event had already happened, why do we need to say "HAVE you EATEN?" since you would be adding extra syllables and hence using more effort to convey a very simple concept? I on the other hand prefer the use of correct grammar because in many languages, the use of incorrect grammar would actually create more dramatic mistakes and misunderstandings. For example, in French, "to love" is "aimer" and this is the basic dictionary form of the word. "I love" is "j'aime". The word "aimer" changes form depending on whether the person doing the loving is "I, you, we, he, she or they as well as whether the event is happening, has happened, used to happen but not anymore, is expected to happen or hypothetically should happen. If you want to diregard the correct use of grammar and simply use the basic form "aimer", then "I love" would be "j'aimer" which in French sounds exactly like "j'aimais", ,meaning "I used to love". There is a lot of difference between telling your partner "I love you" and "I used to love you" !!!!! :sweating: This is very different from English where you could get away with using "love" without any changes and get your message across! In some languages like English you could get away with using incorrect grammar, and survive to see another day. Others like French and Italian and Eastern European languages "force" learners to use the correct grammar because they have no choice - if they are lazy and do not use correct grammatical forms, a lot of misunderstandings and messy things can happen! According to correct Italian grammar "amo" means "I love" while "ama" means "he loves" or "she loves". There is a lot of difference between "I love you" and "He loves you"!

Your Spanish is excellent by the way! You won't pass for a native Mexican ,but your fluency is still way above average for an American! The ability to switch accents is very much dependent on a particular society. The Japanese are notorious for being pretty bad at learning foreign languages to the the point that "McDonald's" is always pronounced "Makkudonarudo" and "hamburger" comes out as "hambagaa". I once had a Japanese tourist ask me in English, "Are you from Thairando?" ("Are you from Thailand?")

Definitely a crash course meant for linguistic geniuses! Yes, memorizing all those kanji is no mean feat. I gather you have to have a natural photographic memory in the first place. Also, the complexity in Japanese compared with Chinese is that the same kanji can have different pronunciations depending on the context in which they are used and this will make learning them even more difficult!

You're most welcome! I like how he really tries to get a hang of the grammar and pronunciation first before learning new words. He has a really good ear for accents and really sounds almost like a native speaker sometimes.

I can tell you that being an English speaker can be a double-edged sword when you learn French. There are many words that English has borrowed form French and thus will be very familiar to you. In French, these words will be pronounced according to French pronunciation and will of course sound very different to what you are used to in English. The rhythms of the language are very different as well. It is the tell-tale give-away that someone is an Anglophone speaking French! French has no fixed stress patterns like in English and you will notice how French people seem to string their sentences together and let their words flow into one another such that beginners are often not able to tell where one word ends and another begins! The grammar is very similar to Spanish and Italian. Nouns change form for singular and plural (they often are pronounced the same though) and have gender - masculine and feminine. The adjectives can have up to four forms so if you say 'That is a big car' , 'Those are big cars', 'That is a big chicken' and 'Those are big chickens' - the word 'big' will have four different spellings; a car is feminine in French and a chicken is masculine. Verbs will have different conjugations and many of the common ones are highly irregular; so 'go' as in 'They GO to school' and 'GO to school!' and 'I want to GO to school' will look and sound totally different. That's my summary but do not be intimidated, as a beginner these will be taught to you in a very systematic way. I hope you enjoy your class!

Welcome ! Hoş Geldiniz! Välkommen ! Make yourself at home, variety and diversity is the spice of life, so the more people we interact with who come from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, the more we will learn to understand both ourselves and the world around us.

Some people may laugh but I totally agree with you! Funny mnemonics are what makes it easier for us to remember complicated kanji! I think that while the methods are not orthodox, they make learning Japanese fun!

It's really fascinating that there are such amazingly talented people out there. I strongly believe that polyglots or hyperpolyglots are people who have a genetic predisposition or inborn talent. I studied music and learned to play the piano from a very young age but look where that took me! In contrast Mozart became a child celebrity and well-known child prodigy, so obviously he had inborn talents in music that are far beyond what I am capable of. In the same way, I believe that hyperpolyglots are born and not made. While yes, we may train ourselves to become fluent in various languages, the ability to to develop fluency in 12 or more languages in adulthood is no mean feat!

Don't worry, like you said, it's all in good fun! Is it an advert for an English-language course, by the way?

Thank you for taking the trouble to ask your parents! Calligraphy (mainly Chinese, Urdu, Arabic and Latin Italic) has been a hobby of mine and I was asked by a friend regarding this 'heavy and knotty' script that he saw being used in old German books and woodcuts. He asked if it is still commonly used and I told him what you posted above, that it's no longer current. He was keen to find some kind of manual on how to learn handwriting in this style.

If you can hear the difference when someone says 'Hello!' and 'Hello?', then I do not think you will have any problems when you learn to differentiate Thai words. Thai people also speak at a higher pitch than English speakers, so it will not be too difficult to diambiguate words. Thai script is difficult in the beginning because of the unfamiliar shapes but once you learn it, reading it is actually easier than English because the complex rules are followed without exceptions. Even words borrowed from Sanskrit often use extra letters that are not pronounced, and a 'silencer' is added at the top of a letter or syllable to show that it is silent. Not even French does that!

I totally agree. It's a fairly common mistake but I am surprised that a popular news anchor would use it on TV! You're totally right, the 'ir-' and the 'less' cancel each other out. It's like saying 'He's uncareless!'.

I also notice more and more English loanwords being used in popular magazines and even newspapers in Japan so that it looks as if a page from a magazine seems to be dominated by katakana! Even common words which have Japanese equivalents like "talent" and 'story" are being replaced by タレント(tarento) and ストーリー (sutoorii) in pop culture magazines. You could sometimes find half a page full of katakana and hiragana and hardly any kanji!

Hi! I am not that fluent in Thai but I was born in a city only 2 hours away from the Thai border. My family and I traveled a lot across the border for holidays all the time. I am thus very familiar with the Thai language even though I did not study it formally. The language is tonal like Chinese, so you really need to pay attention to the 5 tones. "Maa" can mean "horse", "dog" and "to come" when pronounced with specific tones. Also be careful because some words are used only by men and some only by women. For example the word for "hello" is "Sawadee Khap" when said by men but "Sawadee Khaa" when said by women. The writing is similar in principles to Indian Subcontinental languages like Hindi and Nepalese. Basically a character represents a consonant-vowel combination, like "Ko". By adding additional strokes on too, in front, under and around the characters, you change the pattern of the consonant-vowel combination. "Ko" becomes "ka", "kaa", "ki", "kee" and a lot of other combinations and each has 5 tonal variations. Many characters are only used in Sanskrit loanwords so they are pronounced the same in Thai but are written differently. Last but not least, Thai is written with no spaces between words! A sentence is separated from another by a space but not individual words! You have to read long stretches of characters and learn to separate the words mentally.

Found it! Look up zennman2222 on Youtube. In his various video clips, he speaks: Swahili, Indonesian, Arabic, Portuguese, Uighur, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French,Burmese, Korean, Dari, Farsi, Japanese, Tagalog, Thai, Khmer, Russian, Hindi, Cantonese and Turkish; in addition to his native English. (Consider my mind officially blown away!)

I totally agree with you guys. exotic sounds may seem that way to us but to native speakers, these sounds are just natural and ordinary. Spanish or French might sound romantic to an English speaker but to native speakers, they sound completely ordinary! Here's a clip of South African singer Miriam Makeba singing her very popular song "Qongqothwane" - it's in Xhosa, her native language. If you think Chinese or Korean sounds exotic, wait till you hear Xhosa. It uses a lot of click sounds (very common in southern Africa) and while the click sounds are incredibly exotic to us, to them, they're as ordinary as "a,b,c".